What I Learned From Pro-Gun Twitter

Comments mocking mental illness/suicide, enabling or suggesting suicide methods, or using “mentally ill” as an insult will be deleted and all future comments from those commenters will be removed. This is a non-negotiable policy.

CW: gun violence, rape, pedophilia, Islamophobia, racism

Yesterday, I posted a single sentence to Twitter:

My child is more important than your gun.

I tweeted this to the tag #StopGunViolence.

Now, you’d assume that the above statement isn’t controversial, right? The life and rights of a human child should always be valued above the existence or ownership of an inanimate object. To suggest otherwise,–unless we’re speaking of extremely extenuating hypothetical circumstances–is monstrous.

As this is still going on, almost twenty-four hours later, this is only a small sampling. In almost every case, I responded by repeating, “My child is more important than your gun,” and in many cases, the person arguing with me continued to argue, even though they received the same reply over and over. One user sent increasingly agitated messages, insisting they had saved many lives, insistent upon receiving acknowledgement from me, until they finally broke, sending multiple rapid-fire tweets of variations of the word “no” before blocking me, as though I had somehow harassed them.

One user classified my concern for my children as hateful and dishonest, as though not honoring their firearm over my own offspring was an oppressive act itself:

Some of them insisted that their gun ownership protected my children. Some insisted that they had already saved my life and the lives of my family without my knowledge. Some demanded I thank them. One of them asked if my children were good at performing oral sex. Several of them mocked my “feelz” or “fee fees”; apparently their feelz of paranoia and fear are not emotions, but my love for my children is irrational and dangerous.

Jenny…I have no “terror and fear.” I choose to arm myself to protect my family. I’m armed….nothing can scare me https://t.co/gKUDoa7vgR

When I described these tweets as threats, I was quickly informed by other ammosexuals that it’s not a threat to say you’re going to shoot someone. It’s self-defense. The fact that I’d never implied I would take EscapeVelocity’s gun, nor explicitly suggested that anyone should take EscapeVelocity’s gun, had no bearing. Placing more importance on the lives of my own children then I do on EscapeVelocity’s gun was an act of aggression that EscapeVelocity and other gun owners needed to protect themselves from, with threats of violence. In other words: If you don’t value my gun more than you value your children, I get to shoot you because

As EscapeVelocity went on, their fantasies of situations in which they would be called upon to discharge a firearm at a human target escalated:

Lest you overlook the racist connotations inherent in suggesting that the United States is a poorer place since Sherman burned Atlanta, here’s what another Twitter user contributed to the same conversation:

Another Twitter user became involved in the conversation shortly after. I blocked them when they tagged me with a graphic political cartoon of a young blonde woman being gang raped by men of various races, religions, and ethnicities.

Remember the sentence that started this all?

My child is more important than your gun.

Yesterday, conservatives mocked President Obama for crying when speaking about the children gunned down at Sandy Hook elementary school. Fox News–a news source that people trust to give them factual information pertaining to serious events–suggested he may have used an onion or eyedrops to fake his tears. The notion that a human being might, after spending time with the families of the victims of the tragedy and listening to countless stories of lives impacted by gun violence, become emotional at the thought of children gunned down in their classrooms seems ludicrous to these conservative gun wavers. Such an emotion must be faked, for who could ever possibly feel it? Who could genuinely feel sadness over the death of a child?

These are the people in the United States who want unfettered access to whatever arsenal they can build. These are the people who would describe themselves as responsible gun owners. They insist they can be trusted to own firearms, while leaping to threats and intimidation the moment they become frustrated or irritated. All from one single statement:

My child is more important than your gun.

Before these interactions, I would have said that the vocal minority of aggressive gun owners were a fringe group. As I studied the responses I got, and the subsequent escalating behaviors of the people trying to force me to engage with them beyond my form response, I realized the truth. We have fostered a national cult of sociopathic anarchy. You live by the gun, or you die by the gun, and only on the terms of whichever Ted-Nugent-loving, Bible-thumping survivalist who happens to be trolling the anti-gun violence hashtags on social media that day. When a white kid with a bad haircut decides that he’s been rejected by too many female classmates, that’s the day you die. There is no longer any right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Unless you equate being allowed to open carry an assault rifle into Qdoba to “liberty” and the pursuit of guns as the only thing that will make you happy.

The pro-gun right is as much a terrorist organization as Al-Qaeda or Daesh. They hold us hostage by subtly endorsing the assassinations of elected leaders. They buy politicians outright. They claim that grieving parents of murdered children are paid actors, that all of the mass shootings perpetrated by white people with legally purchased guns are false flag operations meant to sway public opinion, and all of the gun violence perpetrated by people of color is a symptom only more guns can treat. The pro-gun right has one weapon, and that is fear. If they can’t make you fear “terrorists”, they’ll try to make you fear “thugs”. If they can’t make you fear “thugs”, they’ll jump to the hypothetical rape of your pretty white daughter. If they can’t make you afraid at all, they’ll become violently afraid of you. Then they’ll kill you, and say it was in self-defense because you tried to take their guns. Self-defense, because their guns are their selves. That’s why they’re panicking; if the government legislates their guns away, they’re legislating these peoples’ identities away.

And if you take away the gun, all that’s left is a an angry coward who can’t even shoot a child to make himself feel better.

JennyTrout

467 Comments

Ellie

These are the kind of people who want a zombie apocalypse so they can justify shooting human bodies for “fun.” Everyone who replied ugly to you ought to be reported and banned for harassment because they feel human lives are that worthless. I’m sorry you got attacked for being a good person and a caring parent, Jenny.

Honestly, I don’t view it as an attack as much as I went fishing, and I had a great catch. I was prepared for these responses, even if the severity of some astonished me. The entire point of the original tweet was to elicit anger from exactly these types of people and expose it.

Did it ever! As an aside I found two of the nastiest offenders shown above were people I’d already muted/blocked/reported for prior harassment of others (probably pertaining to goobitygate or similar). Surprise, surprise!

It’s easy enough to catch angry responses from almost every generalized crowd when you go fishing for them. You can easily garner angry response and threats from so called religious people by denigrating their beliefs. From pro-LGBT with the phrase ‘traditional marriage’. From the left by expressing the idea that the government is corrupt or to large. From the right by expressing the idea that guns are bad, or we spend more than we need on the military. The list goes on and on.

I’m glad you admitted at least that you were fishing and caught well. Most people won’t even admit that much.

Will, I’m mentally ill, as are many members of my readership. I’m not going to tolerate the use of “mentally ill” as an insult, and I’m not going to allow you to armchair diagnose here, either. I’m removing your comment for the safety of my readers.

January 8, 2016

JennyTrout

Suggesting that someone “get help” or “needs help” as a means to win an argument IS an insult. You’re disparaging me for my views by saying I’m mentally ill. That is the definition of an insult and you and your views on my mental health are not welcome here, and you are not welcome to contact me further.

January 9, 2016

Stephanie

Saying one’s child is more important than a weapon someone else owns should not be considered an attack, except on those that are very very twisted.

How in the world is that denigrating a belief? If someone’s house is on fire, and they went back for their AR-15 but left the baby in the crib, you’d call them criminals, fanatics and unfit parents. Yet children are at far more risk in household that have a gun for protection, as data has repeatedly shown.

She was fishing for anger, but she was also highlighting a very scary fanaticism that puts all of us at risk in this country.

Your response is a logical fallacy. You are effectively saying that one’s political ideology (being liberal) means that they don’t threaten their opponents (death or violence). Then you stipulate ‘regularly’, and require that I demonstrate the proof to you.

Understand that you calling it false equivalence does not make my statement any less true. For the most part, if a person perceives a threat of some sort to their safety (among other things they hold dear), most people will respond in an aggressive manner. On the internet it’s even worse because everyone feels some level of anonymity exists and the repercussions are generally limited.

Nothing about the threats on this particular thread of twitter and posts is ‘regular’. There for your qualifier is effectively being used to disqualify anything I would have presented. There for, nothing I present will change your mind as you’ve already decided I’m wrong. Feel free to go look into it yourself.

Lastly if you seriously believe that liberals don’t threaten their opponents (I say this without malice or mock of any kind) then you are either naive or sheltered. Threats of violence are not limited to right or left, or one political ideology over another (except pacifists who I’d agree are less likely than anyone else).

Side note, I am not one of those that thinks every mass shooter was a democrat/liberal nor a republican/conservative as no proof has ever been presented to prove that.

January 9, 2016

Nick

Do you know how to Google, I can point you to several occasions where groups have done such things as propose violence towards Republican politicians, for example:

“A spoiled child (Bush) is telling us our Social Security isn’t safe anymore, so he is going to fix it for us. Well, here’s your answer, you ungrateful whelp: [audio sound of 4 gunshots being fired.] Just try it, you little b*stard. [audio of gun being cocked].” — A “humor bit” from the Randi Rhodes Show

“..And then there’s Rumsfeld who said of Iraq ‘We have our good days and our bad days.’ We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say ‘This is one of our bad days’ and pull the trigger.” — From a fundraising ad put out by the St. Petersburg Democratic Club

“I want to go up to the closest white person and say: ‘You can’t understand this, it’s a black thing’ and then slap him, just for my mental health” — New York city councilman Charles Barron

“I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying needlessly tomorrow….I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.” — Bill Maher

I could go on and include the number of people who wished that Barbara Bush would die when she was hospitalized last year, or when George Bush Sr. was hospitalized the venomous attacks through social media were uncalled for, but I guess it’s all good because liberals are saying these things. The truth is that people can hide behind their personal computer from their home and say things to someone on a screen that they couldn’t to their face and it hasn’t made society any better for either ideology.

January 12, 2016

ginmar

Because “My child is more important than your gun” is SUCH a threatening, violent, insulting, grotesque, bigoted thing to say. Jesus fucking Christ.

Its really apples and oranges. Your children have nothing to do with my gun unless they are foolish enough to break into my home to take from me. Guns for lawabidding citizens are for hunting and/or protection. If you are so concerned about your child teach him to respect other people and their property and I would say the odds are great they wont die by a bullet.

Unless they go to school one day and are gunned down by some kid who is sick of being bullied and wants to kill himself and take as many people down with him as possible. Or by some terrorist nut like the couple from San Bernardinho. Or someone else with a grudge.

Meanwhile, you’re sitting there insulting an innocent person over something as petty as their physical appearance. The real danger here is people like YOU who think it’s okay to talk shit about other people and hurt their feelings. You aren’t perfect either. Nobody is. If your daughter grows up to be overweight, are you going to constantly criticize her and tell her nobody could possibly love her until she meets society’s bullshit standards of beauty?

Wow. I mean… I’m just blown away by the anger coming from some of these people. I’m from Australia, so a whole generation has grown up without knowing the danger of just getting up and going into work or school. We haven’t had a mass shooting since Port Arthur in 1996, when our PM John Howard reacted by instituting a gun buy-back and amnesty, as well as tightening our laws so that semi-autos and autos, of the type used in combat, were not allowed into Australia. Of course, I’m not stupid enough to think that the odd machine gun is not going to make its way onto our shores via the black market, but our record says it all. Not one massacre since 1996. What these gun-toting Conservatives don’t realise is, they can have all the guns they want to protect them at home, but has that stopped a single shooting happening out in public? Did every second American being able to own a gun prevent the Sandy Hook or Columbine massacres, or any since?! NO. Good on you, Jenny, for exposing these freaks for what they are. My children are also more important than anyone’s right to own a gun. I’m just sad for Americans because it’s gone too far over there. I don’t think you guys are ever going to be able to pass the gun laws that keep Australians safe every day.

I mean if I went to a black website or Twitter account and said something inflammatory what would you say? You would say I was being an idiot or a bigot or a troll. It’s the same situation here. Your statement was framed in a way that put people on the defensive right away. Listen women, you don’t know Obama. You don’t know what kind of person he is. You don’t know his history. And you don’t know his intentions. Why are so foolish to believe he would not fake cry??

Well, I didn’t go to anybody else’s space to say it, did I? I tagged it #StopGunViolence. What were 2nd Amendment freaks doing in that tag if they weren’t the ones spoiling for a fight? It’s their fault that they ended up looking like assholes, not mine.

Let me break something down really quick for you. You don’t ever address me with “Listen woman”. This is my blog, it’s my house, you don’t wander in here and shit on the carpet. Do you walk into a woman’s house, point in her face and say, “Listen, woman!”? Actually, you probably do, because you seem like that kind of charmer. I hope one day you do it to a woman physically close enough to you to make you regret the fucked up choice you made by speaking to her that way.

Next up: there was a mass shooting local to me last week. The man who did it was a 2nd Amendment fanatic worried that the government would take his guns. I have absolutely no trust for you people anymore, and I don’t have to give any of you the benefit of the doubt. As far as I’m concerned, all of you people are potential mass shooters, and all of you creep me the fuck out. This post is no longer a forum for you and yours to broadcast your ideals. You’re unwelcome, get the fuck out.

“Next up: there was a mass shooting local to me last week. The man who did it was a 2nd Amendment fanatic worried that the government would take his guns.”

You mean the wackjob Uber driver in Kalamazoo? Strange, CNN keeps saying “Motive Unknown.” And since CNN never misses an opportunity to attack gun owners, they wouldn’t miss a chance to say “he was afraid his guns were about to be taken away” if that was actually the case. Please cite your sources on this claim.

And how about the murderer in Kansas? Convicted felon, firearms knowingly transferred to him by his girlfriend who is now in jail charged with the crime, served with a protection from abuse order 90 minutes before the shooting started. How are you going to blame that one on us?

February 27, 2016

JennyTrout

1. I’m pretty sure I already told you to stop commenting here. A month later and you’re still obsessed with this post? Not scary at all.

2. I never said it was his motive. That also doesn’t make me trust creepily obsessive people like you any more.

3.http://wp.me/p4yStY-On4 there’s your source, now go away. You have a very creepy obsession with this post, have had your comments erased, beenot asked not to come back, yet you insist on being here and engaging with me. You clearly have an issue with boundaries and what is and is not appropriate contact.

You do know that by the magic of the interwebs, your blog sends out an email to everyone whenever a new comment is posted, right? That’s hardly “obsessed.” And it’s not very nice to imply that someone has mental problems like obsessive/compulsive disorders or the like.

So you’ve found one person who said he liked guns and was afraid of gun control and you’ve expanded this into his motive. But now you’ve backed down and said it wasn’t his motive. He liked guns and had a few, so he’s a “fanatic” but even CNN isn’t pointing that way. How about he was just a murderous jerk? Can’t you just accept that?

February 27, 2016

JennyTrout

You are clearly unable to stop contacting me, even after I’ve asked you to stop. Even after a month ago I asked you to stop. I do not owe you any more of my time. I’m deleting further comments from you. Take it as me being silenced or conceding a point, I don’t care. I think it’s pretty clear from the number of times I’ve removed your comments and told you that you’re not welcome here that at this point your are ignoring boundaries and engaging in open harassment.

February 27, 2016

Dani

I work with someone who grew up in a military family. Has lots of guns, says has about 3000 rounds of ammo. When I asked him what he needed it for, he said “have you seen the movie 28 days later?” My response was, “Oh my god, because zombies!!??”

Yeah the stupidity of some people is just mind-boggling. Although 28 Days Later was a rage virus caused by a biochemical weapon if I remember correctly. Still highly unlikely, but more realistic than zombies! I think he’d be better served by that ammo if there was a nuclear war, he and his family survived, and he had to protect their rations from other hungry survivors.

And you know why? because her statement is intellectually dishonest. She is creating an either/or proposition where none exists. What is my gun doing to your child? Last time I checked, my pistol is safely tucked in the holster at my waist whereas I have no idea where your kid might be. Your kid has a real chance of being hurt by the loose collection of prescription pills, Colombian baking soda, dry cleaning wrapping plastic, cleaning solutions and the occasional nocturnal visit from Uncle Ernie than from my gun.

Uhmmm….isn’t someone threatening another person’s life “even just on the internet” a crime? If you haven’t already contacted Twitter…or even the authorities, please consider doing so. Jesus. Though I’m horrified by what you had waiting for you on the computer screen, I’m sadly not entirely surprised.

I have to second on taking these threats seriously. MRAs, gun extremists, misogynists, white supremacists– and there’s a lot of overlap there–can make your life very miserable and some of them are dangerous. That said, you don’t seem to be the kind of person who can be threatened into shutting up, which is awesome.

You’re also right in that that shouldn’t have been a hugely controversial statement, but there are so many gun nuts and they are getting nuttier all the time.

I did not see any threats made in the tweets in this article, I did see a warning, stating that: If anyone were to trespass, and attempt to take property, they would meet the same fate any would be criminal should meet. If you are walking in the woods, and you hear the rattle of a snake, is that a threat, or a warning to stay back??

Jane: I love cake.
Bob: If you try to use my kitchen to bake a cake, I’ll beat your ass.
Jane: Uh, I just said I love cake. You don’t have to threaten me.
Bob: I’m not threatening you. It’s a warning. Leave my kitchen alone and you’ll be fine.
Jane: “I will hurt you” and “I will hurt you if you do X” are technically both threats. That one is conditional does not make it not a threat.
Bob: It’s not a threat to you if you don’t want to use my kitchen.
Jane: It still is a threat. And you made it to me when nothing I said indicated I wanted to use your kitchen in the first place.
Bob: See, then there’s no threat.
Jane: There is a threat because a) what you said is a threat regardless of my intentions, and b) there was no need to bring it up to begin with.
Bob: I say that to everyone who mentions cake just in case.
Jane: That only means you’re accustomed to making threats in situations that don’t warrant them. Meaning you’re not a rational person about this subject.
Bob: If you don’t try to use my kitchen, nothing bad will happen to you. Chill out.
Jane: See, you’re asking me to trust that you’ll respond rationally when you’ve already established that you aren’t able to be rational about this. If you’re not being rational, I can’t trust you to correctly evaluate my intent towards using your kitchen.

Threats are threats and they just get more threatening the less reasonable a person is about issuing them.

How is this being a “caring parent”? The scenario put forth by the misleading whine is that there must be one or the other; as if a child and a gun can’t exist in the same world. This is what happens when liberals think . . .

GOLD. People who want less guns aren’t trying to take your little pistols away from you. It’s the automatic loading, fast shooting machine guns that tend to be used in massacres, and apparently they’re as easy to buy over there as milk and bread. Hell, I watched Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, and it showed that you could buy ammo in Kmart, FFS!!! And I heard you may need a licence to own a gun but a waiting period and background check only applies to pistols. Not sure how true this is but if it is, it’s ridiculous.

“The main [argument for guns] is ‘I need it for protection. I need to protect me. I need to protect my family.’ Really? Is that why they’re called assault rifles? Is it? Never heard of these f**king protection rifles you speak of.”

The only real argument these people really have is “F**k off, I like guns”

I’ve heard the Jim Jeffries bit and it just goes downhill from there as far as factual accuracy. I imagine it’s entertaining if you’re really ignorant about guns, but comedy monologues are not exactly a source of education.

Actually, he completely destroys all your whiny bullshit excuses and exposes you for the liars you really are. Your gun is not your peepee, dude. You should have figured out how to be a man without it.

Actually Australia has found great success with the heavy regulation of guns (specifically pistols and assault rifles, the last of which has no use other than armed assault, hence the FUCKING TITLE OF THE WEAPON). They’ve dropped percentages of gun violence and crimes involving guns to negligible amounts, and anyone who SHOULD have a gun DOES have a gun.

Also – Second Amendment is NOT ABSOLUTE. Holy shit. The 2nd Amendment itself references a “well regulated militia.” What does that say? The Founding Fathers wanted the public to own guns in connection with keeping down a tyrannical government, and that ownership is supposed to include heavy oversight by the state. THAT’S WHAT THE AMENDMENT ACTUALLY SAYS. Love how idiots who barely graduated high school are suddenly Constitutional experts. I saw one *sshat respond to Chief Justice Burger’s comments on the NRA by saying “F*ck Burger – he’s a Libutard too!”

I can assure you in the wording used in the second amendment the word ‘state’ does not refer to the federal government, but the the states individually.

January 8, 2016

Lindsay

Not so. “Free state” meant “free country” and in fact some drafts of the second amendment use those words instead.

January 8, 2016

Joel

First I want to point out that the term ‘assault rifle’ is a journalistic invention to describe a weapon that looks similar to or has characteristics of a military weapon.

The actual terms are semi-automatic, select fire, and automatic or machine gun. The first one defines a fire arm that does not require an action on the part of the user to load a round after firing but requires a trigger squeeze for each round fired. Select fire indicates that it has an option for single round fire, as well as ‘more than one round per trigger squeeze’. Automatic or machine gun will fire as fast as it can while the trigger is depressed.

Now that we have a better basis for the proper names we can move forward with additional information. The semi-automatic style pistols, rifles and shot guns are available to the general population. Everything else (select fire and automatic) is regulated by the government, in some cases by both state and federal, in others just federal. It requires a $200 fee (tax stamp) as well as approval from the ATF after an in-depth background check, among a few other things I’m sure I am not readily aware of. It is quite rare to actually own these types of fire arms because they are also prohibitively expensive on top of the yearly tax stamp required.

In regards to your comment about the Second Amendment, your statement is accurate that it is not absolute (as sustained in case law from the Supreme Court of the US). However your reasoning is factually incorrect. The term ‘well regulated militia’ meant ‘trained’ and ‘any able bodied male’. While today I’d say ‘able bodied person’.

If you read the notes from the Constitional Convention the use of the term ‘states’ is used as “….reserving to the States, respectively….” clarifying at least to me that they are talking about individual states and not the country as a whole.

As well during the discussion the entire premise of it was the balance between a central or federal power (which many were very wary of) and the individual states which were concerned very much that their rights would be swept away by a central power.

I agree that ‘states’ in general can and often is used to describe the country as a whole, and likely could have easily been used then for the same description. It does not seem that way to me however in these discussions on the second amendment at the Constitutional Convention.

January 8, 2016

David

Australia has found great sucess!
The first year results are now in: Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2 percent, Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6 percent; Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent!). In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent. (Note that while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not and criminals still possess their guns!)
Anyone that SHOULD have a gun DOES have a gun. I guess all the criminal should have guns then.

Yup. I live in Australia, and the only time I’ve ever seen a gun is being carried by a police officer. I know some people in the country have rifles, but aside from those we just don’t have guns here. And we’re doing pretty well.

Honestly, the idea of seeing someone in public carrying a gun is fucking terrifying to me. I’ve seen pictures of people walking around in supermarkets with fucking assault rifles on their backs. I would run away if I saw someone carrying one of those, because the only reason you’d be carrying one of those around is if you actively want to kill a person.

And the members of said “well regulated militia” were at the time every able bodied person of fighting age! That does not mean a standing army, or that all the weapons are lock up at some bunker to be distributed when you can get to it! The Minute men were only able to earn that title due to the fact that they were able to assemble, ready to fight, with their guns, because they had them with them! One other job the militia had, and has to this day, is to defend the constitution from enemies, foreign or DOMESTIC! Domestic in this case is the federal government. Hell, back in the days of our founding fathers, anyone that could afford it, could even own real artillery pieces, also known by most as cannons!
In closing, I will leave you with this to think about: It still amazes me that there are some who believe that the 2nd amendment gives them a right.

The 2nd gives me no right. I have such a right ‘by right’.

The 2nd admonishes government not to touch it and also warns of what entity is entitled to defend against abridgement, of any right.

A right cannot be legislated. A right can be lost for improper application by one so possessing; murder, robbery… crimes against person or property where violence or threat of violence is used.

1. WE. ARE. NOT. AUSTRALIA.
2. You might want to read the definition of militia. It is composed of CIVILIANS.
3. You cannot have a well regulated militia without reasonable firearms at the ready.
4. In the event of a catastrophe civilians will need to form MILITIAS quickly. That can’t happen without modern weapons in our possession.

I think I mentioned before that machine guns are easily bought over there… I read your link and I have to correct myself… Martin Bryant, the Port Arthur gunman, used an AR-15 amongst other weapons – a semi auto. Those are the weapons I’m referring to. Thank you for allowing me to make this distinction.

I’m sorry, unless you have a FFA (Federal Firearms License) you can not legally purchase, or own a “assault rifle”! This was dealt with in 1934! The AK’s and AR-15’s US citizens can legally buy are, in fact semi automatic weapons, that only “look like” real assault rifles, and as such, are not capable of automatic fire. http://www.britannica.com/technology/assault-rifle Most shootings occur at about 21 feet, when you take the guns away, all you have done is force the bad guy intent on harm to get closer before you even know things have gone bad! Furthermore, removing guns, does not change the numbers of violent crimes. All that happens is the headline changes from 25 shot by crazed gunman to 25 blown up by crazed bomber….This is not aimed at the followers Islam, A crazy white guy can build a bomb just as easily.

Molly Ann Wymer summed up the difference between “protection guns” and “murder guns” with this hilarious satire.

In summation, there is no difference. A gun is a gun. How is an “assault rifle” any different than a “hunting rifle”? What are the differences and how do you qualify them? The truth is, the only difference is the intent with which it’s used. Set aside the rhetoric and think about it critically.

It’s definitely sociopathic to continually ignore all the statistical evidence that shows a gun owner is far more likely to have that gun used against them during the pursuit of a crime than save themselves. That there were more gun deaths on Christmas Day in the US than the UK had all year (not including suicides). they are just two stats off the top of my head without googling the wealth of evidence out there. I would also wonder about those people who decry Obama’s emotions. Surely they wouldn’t prefer a president that doesn’t get upset at the mass death of children? Historically speaking leaders who couldn’t care less about the lives of children hasn’t worked out well.

Of course I say this as a UK resident. We have strict gun controls. If you really, really want a gun then you can apply for a license, comply with the background checks and follow the rules set down for the safe containment and use of your weapon, as well as regular checks by police and the regular reapplication for your license. For the majority of us here having or wanting a gun isnt even an issue in our daily lives or thoughts. Given your mentions in the last 24 hours, (which absolutely blow my mind; why would anyone even feel the need to argue against the fact that a child’s life is worth more than a gun? What does that say about them as people?) I can only be grateful for that fact.

I live in the UK too and every time I hear the dumb “protection” argument I just think “hello we run a whole country over here without guns and we are absolutely fine and alive”.

I mean our biggest killer in terms of violent crime is probably knives but I’ve never heard anyone advocate for knife-fight training or it to be legal to carry a concealed knife in public. Mostly because that would be insane. The reason we don’t have guns is cultural, the reason we don’t have weapons carried in public is common frigging sense.

What does that have to do with anything? You have to be really skilled to kill one person with a pocketknife, much less 26 before you’re overcome. You’re not allowed “offensive weapons” in public, and knife crime is a real problem. But gun crime isn’t.

Like in Canada, there’s a ban on certain kinds of knives that are obviously meant as weapons. And knife massacres work only if they’re unexpected and if it’s in a very crowded place where people can’t easily run away.

actually, even “obvious weapons” (like swords) aren’t banned in Canada. What’s prohibited are knives that work by springs, centifugal force, etc. Fixed blade and folders that require extra input to open are legal. I belong to a historical group, so we got really well-versed in knife laws. There are laws about “intent” that do not define the type of knife at all.. even a 1 cm blade will get you arrested if you are doing something dumb.

I’ve “opened carried” a long sword through downtown Toronto, the cops were amused.

January 7, 2016

AltoFronto

You can carry a small pocket knife, but the blade must not exceed 3″ in length, otherwise it’s considered an offensive weapon.

“The ownership of any firearm is a privilege and not a right, and that public safety must be paramount.” That’s the Minister controlling the issue of licences and puts the UK attitude to gun ownership in a nutshell.http://is.gd/EokKcJ
There are 170,000 private gun licences in the UK, and 620,000 shotgun licences (farmers need them for vermin control, for instance). The vast majority of the private gun owners keep their weapons at a licenced gun club.
Automatic weapons like carbines are prohibited. No private citizen is allowed to own one for any reason. It’s all explained in the document referenced below.
Here’s the official government guideline document. This is the truth, not some half-assed biased news report:http://is.gd/EokKcJ
Really, go and read it.
I live in a decent area, where I am 99% sure that nobody owns a gun. If a gun is found or someone knows about it, we report it to the police who send an armed response unit to deal with it.
I used to live in a rougher area, where I could be around 80% sure that nobody owned a gun. Same laws applied. And in that area, the gun owners were, by definition, criminals, and they didn’t own guns so they could murder innocent citizens, they tended to use them on each other and during armed robbery.
Gun crime amounted to .02% of all violent crimes committed in the UK in 2014.

We manage to kill several hundred thousand children a year here in the USA via abortion.Based on available state-level data, an estimated 984,000 abortions took place in 2013—down from an estimated 1.02 million abortions in 2012. Yet I don’t see you whinging about that stat. How about this one? From 1973 through 2011, nearly 53 million legal abortions occurred in the U.S. (AGI).

TBS 90% of shootings in the USA are committed by Democrat constituents,in Democrat controlled city’s, shooting other Democrats.

“Democrat” is a noun, not an adjective. When posting on a writer’s blog, one should at least attempt to use grammar, especially if you want any of your “statistics” to be taken even halfway seriously. Also, the plural of “city” is “cities,” and I should know, having lived in several fabulous Democratic cities where I have somehow failed to shoot or be shot by my fellow bloodthirsty Democrats.

I shouldn’t enjoy being a pedantic ass, but some days it’s just so satisfying.

FOR FUCK’S SAKE.. A fetus before twelve weeks is NOT A HUMAN CHILD. It amounts to no more than a bunch of cells by the time most abortions are carried out. Abortion is not murder, but going into an abortion clinic and killing people inside – doctors, nurses and patients alike – is. Now, I’ll assume that you can actually read and absorb this information, but if not, have someone with at least half a brain and a sixth grade education read it to you and explain it so that you are able to comprehend.

That couldn’t possibly be because America’s population is 5 times bigger than Britain’s, could it? I’m glad that British citizens are fine with having no measure of defense for themselves against an over reaching government or criminals, but you have no grounds to advocate for OUR constitutional rights to be taken away.

Yesterday, conservatives mocked President Obama for crying when speaking about the children gunned down at Sandy Hook elementary school. Fox News–a news source that people trust to give them factual information pertaining to serious events–suggested he may have used an onion or eyedrops to fake his tears.

I had missed this particular tidbit of insanity until now, and it is making me want to fire myself and/or all of those people into the sun, because what the fuck. I bawled my eyes out multiple times over the Sandy Hook shooting, and I’m hundreds of miles away, have never met any of the people involved, and am not a parent. I have a hard time imagining how a non-sociopathic person who has kids of his own and met with the parents of the Sandy hook victims could NOT cry when speaking about it. Everything about gun nuts baffles and frightens me, but no matter how much those idiots hate Obama, “he can’t REALLY be sad about the mass murder of small children” is an argument that’s just staggering in its lack of comprehension of normal human empathy.

But then, as you showed, these are people who quite literally think their stupid, deadly toys are more important than anyone else’s life, so I guess normal human empathy is going to be a foreign concept to them.

This disturbed me (among very disturbing replies): ‘Make sure your child stays in a gun free zone at all times. That way the criminals can’t get to them’. So, the writer is implying nowhere in the US is a a gun-free zone? The statement almost seems proud of that, and it seems very sad too. There is no self-reflection or questioning. But, as many before me said, if you have a home gun you are more likely to be shot than shoot, but hey-ho why let statistics get in the way of rhetoric. To live in a country where nowhere is a gun free zone is not normal. Here in Scotland we have had ONE school shooting. The action from Government was swift and decisive. Increasingly, the rest of the world are looking at the USA’s gun culture (and it is an ingrained culture) and finding it wanting. In most of the world Jenny, your statement would have prompted support, not provoked the (insert words here).

Just FYI-the US has designated all the time gun free zones like schools, malls and other places with very strict gun laws, which ironically is where most of the shootings take place. Gunmen are typically fond of places where they can expect that people won’t shoot back. I think the writer was sarcastically implying that those places were safe when in fact they are not as safe as you’d hope. It was kind of an a*$hole statement to make, but I think they were suggesting that the Jenny was naive. Not my opinion, but just what I would suspect was their intent.

Quick example why they would say that: The Aurora, CO shooting where 12 people were killed was the only theater that posted signs saying it was a gun free zone. There were 7 other theaters within 20 mins of his home and all were showing the same movie. He didn’t choose the one closest to him.

Horseshit. The Aurora theatre shooter dropped fucking TEAR GAS. No one would have been able to see clearly enough to shoot him. It was also dark (you know, being a movie theatre and all), and he was wearing body armor. Another armed person MIGHT have ended the killing quicker, or they might have contributed to the body count by accidentally shooting bystanders.

How was he able to shoot targets himself through the tear gas, then? Did he have special goggles that let him see through it? Or is it possible you weren’t there and don’t know enough to speculate on things like that? While you’re speculating you should consider how a police officer with a gun would respond any differently than an armed citizen – police don’t have magic see-though-teargas vision, either.

No, the cops don’t have a magic resistance to tear gas, but SWAT officers would have access to gas masks.

January 7, 2016

Steven Seagal

No I’m aware of the teargas; I’m saying you’re speculating about how an armed citizen would be able to respond to it.

SWAT will take at least (being very generous here) 30 minutes to show up, so it will make no difference to somebody whose goal is to kill as many people as possible.

January 7, 2016

Dani

The police have one target-the shooter

A shooter has many targets-anybody

See the difference? A shooter in a tear gas situation doesn’t need to see clearly, he can just randomly fire and hope to hit as many people as possible.

January 8, 2016

JM

OTOH, Umpqua County College in Oregon was not a gun-free zone, and one of the ‘good guys with guns’ who was there declined to take a shot at the shooter, citing not wanting law enforcement to mistake him for the perp.

The gun-free zone argument is a red herring. Shooters choose locations that have some meaning to them and are filled with people that they can kill and/or terrorize. Last time I checked, just to add two more examples to the list, neither Fort Hood nor the Navy Yard were gun-free zones. Fort Hood, in particular, was a spectacularly bad choice under the gun-free zone logic.

Untrue. According to a regulation 190-14 US Army personnel are not armed on a base unless:

a. The authorization to carry firearms will be issued only to qualified personnel when there is a reasonable expectation that life or Department of the Army (DA) assets will be jeopardized if firearms are not carried. Evaluation of the necessity to carry a firearm will be made considering this expectation weighed against the possible consequences of accidental or indiscriminate use of firearms.

b. DA personnel regularly engaged in law enforcement or security duties will be armed.

c. DA personnel are authorized to carry firearms while engaged in security duties, protecting personnel and vital Government assets, or guarding prisoners.

Hassan knew this and knew he would be shooting unincumbered by pesky return fire for quite a while.

You’re dead wrong, military bases *are* gun-free zones, including Fort Hood. You have to wait for MPs to arrive during a crisis just like you would have to wait for police to arrive. There was a federal bill being circulated that would change that, but I haven’t kept up with its progress.

I’m Canadian and we have our own gun control arguments. We can’t at all reasonably ban firearm ownership here – some people do live in places where a bear might amble into your backyard. However, even the people in favour of the loosest regulation agree that there should BE regulation, and the right to carry a concealed firearm is an extreme fringe position. All automatic weapons are illegal; as far as I know there’s no serious agitation for this to be changed.
I’ve met Americans who are offended when I say that I’m nervous about travelling in the States, and others who are baffled (see above regarding bears and other wildlife). The idea that there are places in the world where your risk of being shot is quite low seems to fly over many a head.

I love traveling in Canada. I come through about once per year. I have traveled without my husband twice, bringing a different daughter each time and I never worried about our safety. I do bring a dog for a bear alert since we camp in our little RV and stop in remote places, but that is it. Even when we moved from the Lower 48 to Alaska, it was not hard to comply with your gun laws and yes, we do have some rifles because my husband hunts. It takes the sting out of the grocery bill up here and yeah, bears. However, I don’t need a border crossing to tell me when I am back in the US, especially the Lower 48. People are angrier. It shows in the bumper sticker choices and in their driving.

Here’s another thing; in order to apply for a firearms license (at least in BC, where I live), you need to fill out an application which asks you if you have recently experienced divorce, a separation, a breakdown of a significant relationship, job loss or bankruptcy, as well as if you’ve ever been reported to the police for violence. You need to provide two personal references as well as a photo guarantor; the license board will call these people and get them to verify your background. You need to also pass a safety training course.

There have been so few mass shooting incidents in this province that Google basically doesn’t bring them up. One time a guy went nuts in the 1970s, like cannibalism-level nuts, but other than that, no. I can go to school every day and feel safe. I went to the very first showing of The Force Awakens, in a packed theater on the Thursday night, and never once worried that I would lose my life. And I DO know responsible gun owners; one of them showed me her rifles, all of which had trigger locks, along with the locked case she had to keep them in, along with the separately locked ammunition container.

Except none of the proposed background checks would have prevented any of the mass murders we’ve had in the US. The people that committed these crimes had no criminal records and no notable mental health flags.

Virginia Tech – The murderer was NOT a prohibited person per the Virginia State Police. The murderer was not involuntarily committed to a mental institution. He was not convicted of a crime. He passed two background checks when he purchased two guns a month apart.

The Sandy Hook Elementary murders were committed by a murderer who used the infamous “Murder your mother and steal her guns” loophole. Are you suggesting that we instituted some sort of background check that would be triggered during the commission of a crime like murdering your mom?

And the Charleston Church shooting, it is still not clear that the crime for which the murderer was originally placed on a hold for was a prohibiting offense. It was apparently a relatively minor drug offense. Do you take the position that any minor drug offense should ban anyone from all of their civil rights forever? Or just the civil rights you don’t like?

January 7, 2016

whimbrel

I am ridiculously late to this post, but I wanted to add that those regulations are the same across Canada.

Also, if you are married or in a common-law relationship, you have to sign off on your spouse’s/partner’s application for a license. If you are in a domestic violence situation and cannot safely not sign the license, there is a phone number to call (listed on the application and on the RCMP website) that allows you to report that you were coerced into signing and do not consent to your partner/spouse getting their firearms license.

I don’t know anyone who has done this so I’m not sure what followup takes place if a person calls to revoke their consent, but at least the mechanism exists.

source: I have my non-restricted license, my partner has his restricted license.

Ironically, the annual NRA convention is a gun-free zone. Yes, wingnuts, you have heard me correctly. Your precious NRA president, Wayne LaPierre, is goddamned hypocrite and coward who hides in a gun-free zone! How do you like them apples?

This is a bald faced lie. You may not be the liar, but the person who originated it knew for a fact it was a lie and repeated that lie after being told it was a lie. I was at the last NRA convention and I carried throughout that convention. I was in the Media Room. As a podcaster, I am given access to the Media Room the same as any other news reporter. I was standing (sitting, actually) three feet from this photo when it was taken IN the Media Room. I can name the three people in it.

I don’t like guns, I wouldn’t want to see a gun on or with anyone other than military personnel or a police officer, so I’m lucky I don’t need to (Canadian).

I am curious though: why do people that carry guns (obviously all day) jam them into their pants? I really don’t understand why a man in particular would aim one toward his boy-bits. What happens when he uses a public washroom? Does he balance it on the toilet paper holder? How does he use his cellphone on the potty when he has to hold his gun? Honestly, I want to know the logistics here. I’m asking you in particular because of the photo.

*Because this response will most likely be banned or moderated, please pass the answer along yourself, Jenny. If you choose to allow the comment, please remove this leading paragraph*

These firearms are certainly NOT simply jammed into their belts. They are securely contained in holsters properly designed to hold the handguns, with the triggers covered to prevent a negligent discharge.

All three people in this photo, along with all people who normally carry firearms, are using holsters. The one in the middle, Dennis from Dragon Leatherworks is using a simple “Outside The Waistband” or “OWB” holster. You can see it. The other two people, Co-host Adam on the left and Say Uncle’s Chance on the right are using what is called an “Inside the Waistband” or “IWB” holster. You can, if you look, clearly see the leather straps which go around their belts to attach their holsters to the belts.

Here is a link to a company who sells one type of IWB holster so you can see what one looks like.

I do not like them very much. I prefer an OWB holster as I find them more comfortable. But like many other things in life, different people have different opinions. You have to find what works best for you.

They are also, if you look, most certainly NOT pointed at any “boy bits.” Though as an adult, one is permitted to use the proper medical terms of penis and testicles. You can see that since all three of these gentlemen are right handed, they carry their handguns at or behind the point of their right hips. In the near impossible event that the firearm would discharge inside the holster, the bullet would pass out of the pants, singing the outer cheek of their right buttock. Generally when something like that happens, it is because someone has his finger on the trigger when he is putting his gun in his holster. That has happened to several police officers. What never actually happens is for a handgun to discharge inside a holster when no one touches the trigger. Modern firearms cannot fire that way.

As for how one would use the toilet, one simply leaves the firearm in the holster. A properly designed holster will hold the firearm well enough that you can turn it upside down and it will retain the firearm, yet will release it if you pull on it. It makes zero sense to remove a loaded firearm from its holster while using a toilet. That takes a firearm from its safe holstered condition and turns it into a dangerous situation. It also could lead to forgetting the firearm in the toilet. There have been several occasions when a police officer has left a firearm in the toilet and it has been found by someone else. This is, as you can imagine, rather embarrassing.

January 10, 2016

khan

For once you posted something actually informative. Kudos. I appreciate it.

January 13, 2016

Firehand

Untrue. Proven so by multiple sources. So why are you still pushing that lie?

A major problem I see about the existence of “Gun Free Zones” is by being created, they become Killing Zones. The criminals seek such places out to carry out their deranged activities of causing the death or injury BECAUSE they know that there will be no one present to prevent their actions, or to react to stop its continuance.
Check your statistics. Most of all of the locations where multiple deaths and/or injuries occurred were IN what are referred to as sacred “Gun Free Zones”.
Also, if you again check the statistics, you will find that many of the perpetrators were so cowardly that, at the FIRST sign of resistence or response from Law Enforcement, they committed suicide.
Activities identified as being terroristic are normally viewed as efforts to attain Martyrdom. “The more deaths, the more publicity you get!”
I’ll carry my self defense firearm everywhere I am allowed to, but I still hope that I NEVER have to draw it to defend my life or the life of a family member, or even possibly to defend the life of someone who is, without ANY doubt, about to become the victim of serious, and potentially fatal, bodily harm. I would MUCH rather have it and not need it than to need it and not have it!

Okay, and tell us where were you guys when the shootings in Minneapolis happened (where three pro-racists members shot several people in full view of the police)? Minnesota is an open carry state, why were the ‘bad guys’ still able to go to a protest and shoot their guns off at unarmed people?

The fact is, there have been still many gun homicides in open-carry states ANYWAY, and while you may be equipped to be able to USE a gun, how equipped are you to handle gun fights or mass shootings? In 1986, my parents feared bringing us kids to visit my grandparents in Texas because they found out that there had been a mass shooting in a roadside restaurant. And there were news coverage of people who admitted that although they had shotguns and handguns in their cars, they were too terrified to enter the restaurant or endanger the children that were still inside with the gunman. I still remember how pale their faces looked after the whole thing was taken down by the police.

Look, it’s NOT a bad thing to be scared and ill-equipped to handle situations like mass-murders. Because an average person isn’t trained in gruelling, months-long programs like the police and the US military (and even worse still, there’s a whole different special task force in dealing with hostage situations and cleanup–because even the cops and soldiers aren’t even emotionally or mentally cut out for that kind of deal). But I won’t forgive SCAREMONGERING people and pretending that they’ve all got an ‘Inner Batman’ inside them instead of actually listening to people who’ve actually been to situations like what you’ve just mentioned.

(oh, and those guys calling a woman stupid, threatening to have oral sex with her children and then sending her racist and violent pornography? That doesn’t help).

No, the point about staying in a “gun free zone” is, that most mass shootings occur in them! Bad guys love to attack places where they don’t have to worry about someone shooting back for 5 or 10 minutes while the cops are in route.

Another UK resident here.
I got attacked for making the following statement, which is similar to yours. “You are paying for your gun control laws with your children.”
It’s a tax, as much as paying in money is. Show them the statistics/proof that gun control works, and they scoff.
I think it’s an economic thing. The gun lobby is mighty in the US, and the financial interest is huge, as long as a gun is a consumer item people aspire to.
The last school shooting in the UK was Dunblane, in 1996. After that, the citizens voluntarily gave up their rights. The tightening of the gun laws went through with no opposition, because we weren’t prepared to pay that.
Australia has recently tightened its gun laws, too. Look at the difference it made to their stats.
Did you know that in the US today you are statistically more likely to be shot by a toddler than by a terrorist? The old argument that “criminals still have guns” just doesn’t hold water when you start to look at it.
One worrying thing is that the US, like all the other countries opposed to Daesh, must have terrorist sleeper agents, or converts who have chosen to work undercover. In the US, they can amass as much of an arsenal as they like, without being arrested for owning that stuff. They can’t be stopped as long as they have the right licenses. They won’t all be avowed, open Muslim extremists. Most will probably go unnoticed.

I saw the toddler statistic recently, and it’s truly pathetic that that’s how bad it’s gotten. I also learned that in my state if a toddler DOES shoot someone, the gun owner isn’t criminally liable. There was a petition going around trying to change that, at least enforce stricter laws on gun storage. People were actually arguing that locking guns up made them “taboo” and therefore was more dangerous for kids than leaving guns lying around.

Oh, JFC. Locking guns up makes them “taboo”, which makes them more dangerous.

These fucknuts live to make things like sex or alcohol or weed taboo –things that can also harm them (less so with weed)– and therefore more dangerous. They lock all of that information away, relying on “abstinence only” bullshit.

If you are a gun owner and don’t up away firearms and you have children within a 1-mile radius, you are a fucking waste of blood and oxygen.

Anyone who has firearms which are kept for self defense in any location where children may frequent has two obligations.
1. Keep them where children who are inexperienced or uneducated cannot access them.
2. As they grow and become responsible enough, give them the experience and education necessary for them to understand the results of a discharged firearm, as well as when and where one should be discharged.
No guns are evil. All gun owners are not evil.
The most reliable thing to stop a “bad guy” with a gun and evil in his heart, will always remain a good guy with a gun, no matter whether he be a Law Enforcement Officer or a citizen who has become legally qualified and trained how to respond to evil scenarios.

Leaving aside the lunacy that says being able to shoot stuff is more important than the life of an actual human being, and allll the stats that show as a gun owner you are MUCH more likely to be the victim of gun violence than a non-gun owner, as a lawyer who actually, you know, understands the Constitution, the way these people talk about the Second Amendment makes my head explode.
The Second Amendment doesn’t say everyone can have a gun. It says “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” We didn’t have a standing army when the Bill of Rights got written, and there was a legitimate (and eventually correct) fear that the Brits would come back (which they did). We won the American Revolution because regular people joined local militias. But we have an army, and a navy and a coast guard and the marines. There IS no longer a need for a militia, and, more importantly, the term “well-regulated” is right fucking in there.
Hell, the First Amendment says “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” That’s way more cut-and-dry than the Second Amendment and you still can’t yell “Fire!” in a theater, or threaten someone or defame them. We all understand there are limits to our freedoms; if there weren’t it would be total anarchy. These lunatics literally care more about getting to shoot things than about murdered children. We’re trying to have a civilization here. And these people are bringing it all down.

Right? And taking up arms against the government is treason, which is not sanctioned by the constitution. Weirdly, a lot of these people also want to constantly enlarge the military and militarize the police (and defend anything the police do) and support surveillance. Do they think Obama is going to take them on all by himself or something?

The Second
Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those
exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have
failed—where the government refuses to stand for reelection
and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the
courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees.
However improbable these contingencies may seem today,
facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make
only once.
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, 9th Circuit Court

And contrary to the belief of ammosexuals, the United States was founded without a standing army (the British one left a bad impression) so it was believed that *well-regulated* militias would serve as the primary defense forces as they had in the Revolution – hence, the Second Amendment. That did not last terribly long, and we have not updated Constitution to account for our rather large standing military. Why anyone thinks any amount of AR-15s will help them overthrow a suddenly evil US Government that has *nuclear* weapons, I will never understand.

They watched Die Hard too many times and think they’re John McClane. They believe winning fights is a combination of firepower and heroic virtue. As long as they remain the virtuous ones, they’ll have an advantage even if their firepower is put to shame by what the military can muster.

January 8, 2016

makfan

And we are regularly subject to searches to enter buildings, board planes, attend sporting events, etc. The TSA confiscates things and turns people in to law enforcement.

The courts have upheld these as administrative exceptions to the fourth amendment protections against search and seizure. I despise the TSA body scanners, yet other than having a patdown I have no choice if I want to fly. They are even taking away some of the choice to have a patdown. People are okay with that (“if it makes us safer, blah blah blah”). Why is it that gun restrictions are the only thing that generates such total outrage?

Because for a lot of the gun advocates it’s not about freedom, it’s about the fact that they like guns. The NRA isn’t advocating rational gun use, and hasn’t been for a long time.

I am far more outraged by the TSA body scanners than I am by gun restrictions, but I’m not in favor of wholesale gun restrictions either.

In the instance of Jenny’s tweet, however, I think the outrage comes from Twitter being the sort of place where you can only argue in rhetorical flourishes rather than making reasoned discussions (you cannot have a reasoned discussion with evidence in 140 characters), and taking that tweet at face value requires accepting a host of other propositions that they know they disagree with but don’t have the rhetorical training to dissect out– just as an example, there’s a definite implication there that if you don’t want to restrict guns, then you’re okay with the killing of children, and I’m not sure they have the ability to reason out that that’s what they’re reacting to and state it rationally. (An implication that makes me react very negatively to the original tweet– but I wouldn’t then hunt her down on Twitter shouting about it, because I’ve had rhetorical training.)

Oh, dear. Where to start? I’m sorry Meghan, but the Militia is all males 17-45 in good health and who are or have made a declaration to become citizens of the US, plus anyone else who chooses to be part. It’s right there in US Code. You can look it up if you like. It’s not like it’s a deep dark secret.

And you most certainly CAN shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater. If there is, in fact, a fire. You are encouraged to do so. Required to. Would be punished in some cases for failing to do so. What you cannot do is shout “Fire!” in a malicious attempt to cause a panic, cause people to get hurt in that panic, and then claim that you cannot be sued or otherwise legally charged for the resulting harm caused by the panic you maliciously caused. Nowhere does it say that you are required to have your tongue cut out or your mouth duct taped shut while in a theater in order to prevent you from speaking, just on the off chance you might shout “Fire!”

Similarly, the text of the Second Amendment is pretty clear. Because the intent of the Second Amendment is that “the security of a free state” is best protected by “a militia that is well regulated,” the Second Amendment states that the people’s “right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Not hard to understand. It clearly does not include the “right” to murder people. Or to cause harm to people who do not deserve harm to come to them. The same way one cannot use their ability to speak to defame or deliberately and maliciously cause a panic, one may not use their ability to cause harm to physically harm or to threaten harm to innocent people.

You see how that works? You see how you’ve confused “Ability” with “Intention?” I have the “ability” to kill you with my guns. I have no intention to do so as you are no threat to me. It would be a gross violation of your rights, the peace of this nation, and the laws of every locality in every state for me to harm you in any way. Plus, I don’t want to harm you. But you are fixated on my ability to do so because I have a gun. I find this very confusing. And irrational.

Sorry, no. Per Article 1 Section 8. of the Constitution, the Congress only has this power when it calls the Militia (of the States) into what is called “Actual Federal Service.” This is something you might know about if you have served in the military. Have you? Then you know about it too. Having served in the US Military and a State Guard component, I am familiar with the difference.

The critical thing you are missing, the part of the law to which I was referring, is

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

You will note that this is pretty much what I said above. You will also agree that in today’s society, with our age and sex discrimination laws, it would be a tough sell to say that women and older men who wished to participate in the unorganized militia are not permitted to do so.

Oh Seany, let’s be real here. Your real issue is you’ve turned your gun into your peepee, and you’re terrified someone will take it away because how else will you feel like a man for once in your failed, impotent life if someone takes away your little peepee?

§ 127A-1. Composition of militia.
The militia of the State shall consist of all able-bodied citizens of the State and of the United States and all other able-bodied persons who have or shall declare their intention to become citizens of the United States, subject to the qualifications prescribed in this Chapter, who shall be drafted into the militia or shall voluntarily accept commission, appointment, or assignment to duty therein. (1917, c. 200, s. 1; C.S., s. 6791; 1949, c. 1130, s. 1; 1957, c. 1043, s. 1; 1963, c. 1016, s. 2; 1967, c. 563, s. 1; 1975, c. 604, s. 2; 2011-195, s. 1(a).)

So in North Carolina, they do not have age or sex requirements spelled out in the preamble at least.

I guess this proves my point that I am a member of the unorganized militia of the State of North Carolina. At such time as the Governor calls me into active service, I will respond, bringing my rifle with me. If I see something that needs doing, I will do it. If it makes you feel better, you may call it “community service.” I really don’t care.

You’re talking about the “organized militia,” which would be the National Guard. The “unorganized militia” is a loose definition approximating whoever is around and capable of fighting.

The National Guard is a great example of how the federal government can botch or corrupt any concept. Why? Because they sent the National Guard (a *militia*, which should only be used for *defense*) to Iraq and Afghanistan!

There’s so much bizarre nonsense in this comment I don’t even know where to start, but thanks for the lecture on the Constitution when you clearly don’t understand what you’re talking about. My point, which you completely ignored, is that the language of the First Amendment is MUCH stronger about the protection of freedom of speech than the Second Amendment is about guns. And yet, we all understand that there are certain types of speech that are not protected by the First Amendment. The fire-in-a-theater line is an incredibly common example of unprotected speech. As I stated, I went to law school, I know how the Constitution works. The Second Amendment, which does include a caveat to the right to bear arms, most certainly does not endow people with the right to own any gun without regulation. There are limits to this right, as there are to ALL rights.
Re: the Second Amendment, that first clause tells you why the founders thought we needed guns. We had just fought a war using a militia. Context is important. And while your citation was cute, it’s not relevant. The “well-regulated” militia is the actual military. We don’t need a citizen army, and, in fact, do not have one. It’s archaic, and you can’t pretend the first half of the sentence doesn’t exist or exists in some vacuum. We know why they wrote that. The reasons don’t exist anymore.
And I don’t even know what to do with your last paragraph, as I didn’t say anything about murder, your owning a gun, or anyone shooting me. I was commenting on you and your brethren’s contortion of a document you don’t understand. But thanks for putting words in my mouth. I’m not fixated on anyone’s ability to do anything, I’m merely pointing out that you all seem to think the Second Amendment means you can have guns without constraints, and that is simply not what it means. Anyone who balks at background checks or limits on owning assault weapons is not someone who understands the Constitution, or frankly, is someone who is smart or responsible enough to own a gun.

You may have gone to law school, but you clearly did not study the Second Amendment. That’s not a complaint about you, merely an observation. As I pointed out elsewhere, the Militia is codified in US Code and is all males 17 to 45 who are or have made a declaration to become US Citizens. Plus all women in the National Guard. You can look this up. It’s not a secret. You don’t get to pretend this isn’t true. You also don’t get to say, “Hey, we don’t use the Militia, so we don’t get to have guns any more.”

What you are also not paying attention to is that the first part of the sentence, the “a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” does not weaken the meaning of the second part of the sentence. It strengthens it. You see, so often we hear, “Well, you can have guns to hunt with.” But that’s not what the Second Amendment is all about. And the first part makes that clear. The Second Amendment protects fighting weapons. It protects ARMS, and arms which are suitable for use in a militia. So guess what? My AR-15 is more protected than my .22 caliber target rifle. My .45 caliber handgun, being a pistol suitable for battlefield use is far more protected by the Second Amendment than someone’s duck hunting shotgun. Though even a duck gun would put a hurting on a soldier, so it’s not like it’s unprotected entirely.

While you may have gone to law school, it doesn’t appear that you have thought through any of the implications of what you are arguing.

Because, in the US, which has the highest rate of gun violence of any first world country in the world, YOU may not have the intention to kill people, but clearly some of your fellow countrymen are not the same. Or at the very least, they are incapable of being safe with guns even if their intentions are not malicious. Did you know that six people were shot in 2016 by their dogs? SIX. By DOGS. And some dude accidentally shot his own mother a little while ago. And all the people each year shot by babies and kids. The lot of people living in the US are like five year olds playing with toasters in the bath. They’re only self destructing, to no purpose.

Perhaps you may want to possess nuclear materials for legit scientific research, but that stuff is regulated for good fucking reason. I find your inability to look at the facts and comprehend them confusing and irrational.

‘I’m sorry Meghan, but the Militia is all males 17-45 in good health and who are or have made a declaration to become citizens of the US, plus anyone else who chooses to be part.’

As an army brat, I’d like to ask for a citation. Not to mention that even accidents in the military can happen–and they’re trained far more better and more painstakingly than an average civilian who really likes gun.

Seriously, an average swiss is often asked to serve in the military after he hits 18 (with female volunteers occassionally). While many of them choose to have guns in the house, they’re expected to still NOT EVER keep the ammo at home unless they have a special permit (like the UK, where nobody is allowed to have guns unless you’re a farmer). I’ve even talked with a few people and asked if they ever worry about having an invasion, and they’re like, “So? Is this gun gonna stop a tank? Or a missile? If it happens, my family’s got bunkers”

The reason why we’re ‘fixated’ is because we have the information at our hands to compare the US with a myriad of other countries (and some of us periodically hop between the US and other countries, and realize that it isn’t such a ginormous big deal). Especially when some of us live near army bases with commanders who claim that ‘we have a right to be here because we aim to protect Europe from getting invaded again!’, despite that we see training days where the base would shut its gates in case of ‘terrorism’ and only those allowed inside would be Americans or those with special permits (which, when 9/11 happened and there had been a local riot when we were living in Bahrain–the army base went into a total lockdown which led my dad being locked inside while we kids were left stranded outside with our mom. Because the base didn’t send out a memo for US families to get inside the base during a ‘security threat’. And no, they didn’t ask any of the local civilians if they wanted to get inside.

Since 9/11, us army kids knew that if the UK ever got invaded–the army base will only protect themselves (and because of the ‘security lockdown drills’, even the local English farmers and villagers in Stukeley know that they won’t get any ‘saving’ if the worst happens). It’s like the NRA. Both groups claim that they’re gonna be the ones deterring the enemy from hurting the rest of us, but then we see evidence on how that’s not gonna happen. So while you’re here saying that it’s for the ‘peace of the nation’, how come none of your buddies said anything when John Crawford died?

Hmmm. I actually AM a lawyer, and one who does constitutional litigation (I do criminal work) on a regular basis. And your position is a crock.

The Second Amendment is made up of two clauses, one an independent clause, one a dependent clause. “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” is a dependent clause, and has no meaning absent the independent clause it is associate with. “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” is an independent clause. It’s meaning is self-contained.

And it is pretty plain. The “people” mean the same thing the “people” mean in the 1st amendment, or the 4th, or the 5th. Moreover, the “militia” is by federal statute all of the citizens of the U.S.

Well-regulated, BTW, in the language of the 18th century, meant “in good working order,” not regulated in the sense you think of regarding the ever-present heavy hand of government regulation. You’ll need to read up on that, too.

To illustrate the point, let’s change the subject somewhat, shall we? “A well-educated electorate being necessary to the functioning of a free republic, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed.” Would you argue that only voters get the right to keep or read books? Would you argue that only books which related to the functioning of a republic were covered by the language? Would “the people” suddenly be something different than “the people” in the other parts of the Constitution?

I don’t think so.

You just don’t like the provision. Fair enough. Repeal it. Go ahead, give it a go.

But understand what it’s about before you do. You have read the Declaration of Independence, haven’t you? Remember the part about the right of the people, when justified by continued oppression, to remove a government and replace it with one of their choosing? (paraphrasing, of course). The Second Amendment protects that right, should it be necessary. That’s what its about.

I’ll quote Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th circuit:
• “The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.”

I hope it doesn’t come to that. I certainly have no desire to witness same. But I’ll not surrender the ability to do so, thank you, should it become necessary.

It is also notable that although the ultimate decision in Heller was 5-4 (you have read Heller, haven’t you? How ’bout McDonald?), not a single justice, even the dissenters, adopted the sort of generalized, social “militia” position you seem to advocate. Even the dissenters recognized that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, much like the other rights protected (not granted) by the Constitution. They were simply willing to ignore that constitutional mandate and justify an effective ban on firearms in DC because – well, you’ll have to justify it. I can’t. What the dissenters essentially ultimately concluded is that “we don’t like this provision so we’re going to ignore it.”

How convenient. To ignore the parts of the Constitution we don’t like. What other parts do you advocate we ignore?

You may not like this provision. You may disagree with it. You may argue that it ought to be changed or abolished. But you cannot simply pretend it is something it is not. And constitutions, remember, are designed to put certain policy choices outside the reach of any majorities. THIS policy choice was already made, some 200+ years ago, thank you. It’s outside the reach of any majority, and unchangeable under ordinary rules. Moreover, the right is inherent, not granted by any government entity. Should you abolish the 2nd amendment (good luck with that), the right do defend one’s life and liberties would still exist.

“Fire in a crowded theater?” Really? You really want to cite a throwaway line from a WWI case (Shenk v. US) justifying censorship; a case that is universally recognized today as wrongly decided?

BTW, and to the ridiculous point of this little exercise in virtue-signaling: yes, my gun is more important than her child. To me. Of course, that’s an entirely false choice; my gun is not remotely a threat to her child. Far more likely threats to her child are poisons in the home, traffic, falling, swimming pools, and various and sundry electrical and other hazards.

My firearm is no threat (or so low as to be statistically insignificant) to my child either. On the contrary – in the event of a threat to my family, my firearm may well save my child, and others. It’s unlikely, of course (we live in an exceedingly safe nation; violent crime rates are at near 40 year lows, and have been steadily dropping), but that does not mean that I do not prepare for that eventuality.

I keep a fire extinguisher near the kitchen, too. I don’t expect to need it, but I prepare for eventualities. See how that works?

Finally – you can posture and pander to your heart’s content. Those who would deprive me of my fundamental right to defend myself and my liberties – which is what you are advocating – are on the wrong side of history. You’re losing. The president’s “executive actions” are perilously close to being entirely rhetorical, with no substance. There’s very little “there” there. He’s effectively impotent on this issue, and rightly so. That said, would this administration confiscate firearms, if they could? Absolutely.

But they can’t. And they know it. Even should it be attempted, it is destined to fail. For firearms owners everywhere can simply ignore it. Even in blue-state New York and Connecticut, new laws requiring registration of so-called “assault rifles” (an entirely politically created term ) are being effectively ignored. Irish democracy works, thankfully, and citizens are smart enough to know when they’ve had enough. Further, Americans are voting with their feet and their pocketbooks, buying firearms at a record pace; every time this administration makes noises regarding gun control, millions of new firearms are sold, and new firearms owners, with a stake in the issue, created.

Keep it up. At Obama’s rate, he could still get to 400 million guns in the U.S. Give it the old college try, how ’bout? 😉

Do you have a point to make, or is this simply more SJW vitrue-signaling, politically correctness crap?

January 8, 2016

Ange

What wisdom is that? Shooting impotently at nukes any govt could use against you in a flash if they so chose?

Face it, you’re scared. Why? I don’t know. You’re no good to a government that can’t take taxes from you, they want you to go about your business. The guns give you the illusion that you’re the big dog in charge but in the grand scheme of things you’re pocket change. You can’t shoot your own fears mate.

Looks like you didn’t learn anything, you just kept repeating the same meaningless phrase. To people that value gun rights, “My child is more important than your gun” is equivalent to “My child is more important than your free speech,” “My child is more important than your right to not incriminate yourself,” “My child is more important than your right against unreasonable searches and seizures,” etc.

You’re making an appeal to emotion and not an honest faith effort to engage in debate. There are real arguments and case law justifying American ownership of firearms.

I don’t think you realize the people saying that you should try to come and take their firearms weren’t threatening you, they were responding to an implicit threat of state violence on your part – they are saying they will defend themselves if you try and use violence against them, whether directly or by trying to get the gov’t to do it for you.

It depends. At their age, 99.999999 % of the time you’d be absolutely correct.

If, however, on that one off 0.000001% chance that they were posing an imminent threat that could cause serious harm or death to another person that consisted of a clear motive, means, and opportunity to carry out the harm, then (and ONLY then) would the gun be AS important if it could be used to prevent aforementioned harm/death. (FYI, this is the ONLY case where one can use self-defense. If any of the criteria is not met, it’s grounds for the prosecution to seek murder charges)

Hopefully your munchkins will never EVER get into that position.

But yeah, I’ve been in a gun store when someone walks in, clearly addicted to guns, talking about how one model was ‘calling to him.’ Ugh. But yeah, their paranoia is self-feeding when they get near their weapons.

I dunno, I’m going to have to disagree with you there. A child with a motive for murder…okay, let’s go with that sort of bizarre scenario. Bizarre things do happen, after all. But even then, I’d say the life of this murderous child is as important as the person whose life is in danger – not less, not more – and an inanimate object doesn’t even come close. To say a piece of metal is more important than the child in question because it might save the other person’s life (at the expense of the child’s?) is to state that the second person is more important than the child.

That’s how I see it, anyway. Do correct me if I’ve misunderstood your point.

Tamir Rice, unfortunately, was still technically a 195 pound “child” when he brandished the toy-that-looked-like-a-real-gun. The officers had no idea if the ‘gun’ was real or not, so they shot him. He had been pointing it at neighbors, who knows why (possibly to make himself look more important.) True, one caller to 911 thought it may have been a toy gun, but others may not have. So. Child. Brandishing weapon. Bad thing.

That leads me to another question. Jenny never defined “child.” I can interpret that to mean either a) her offspring unit(s) that will always be her ‘children’ forever, even when they’re 60, or b) up to some age, like 12 (thereafter they’re “teens” and then “grownups”). The Columbine shooters were clearly in the ‘teen’ category and demonstrated intent, means and opportunity to murder (and they were someone’s “child”), so I’d say in the situation where one person decides to take the life of another, the second person’s life is more valuable because they’re the innocent party.

January 7, 2016

ElBandito

It’s not even just that–a child murderer does NOT deserve to get outright executed on the street. I’ve heard a lot of shit about the US, but I’d be damned if my country turns into Rio’s City of God where a kid can get shot in full view by the police or by some ‘vigilante’ and everyone else just looks away and goes back to business.

That’s one of the reasons why I’m surprised at you MyDogsPA. If Tamir Rice’s death was perfectly justified, then why did the officers admitted that they lied in their statements? If Tamir deserved to die, then what made the officers try to cover their tracks?

Also, are you advocating for gun use or not? Because that could’ve been your kid playing with your gun and pretending to be you. If your kid gets immediately shot for ‘waving it around’, would you have shrugged and go, “that’s fair, he was at fault. Even though the police lied in court.”? I don’t think so.

January 11, 2016

LongLostFriend

Ah, the Twitter equivalent of covering one’s ears like a child and saying, “LALALALA!” Such an insightful response to his point.

OK. Don’t get one then. Why do you get to take my rights away because you’re scared? Put a fence around your pool then. Because those kill more children every year. And definitely don’t put them in your car.

January 7, 2016

Steven Seagal

Her response will fare well with her echo chamber of sycophants, but the readers who approach with an open mind will be more receptive to rational comments and turned away by her petulance. That’s why I always approach in good faith. Plus I’m always open to having my own mind changed, but shockingly a response like hers just tends to harden resolves.

There are plenty of rational comments in the blog post itself, Steven. You might not agree with them, but they’re not irrational. You have every right to disagree. But I’ve approached this with an open mind and I agree with Jenny. That’s not because I’m a sycophant, although it could be because I’ve lived my whole life in a country with very strict gun control and very low levels of gun violence. It works for us.

January 7, 2016

Steven Seagal

@xebi There are some now, yes. If you note the timestamp, at the time I wrote that, it was quite a different picture (including the direct responses of the author, you’ll note). I respect that rational minds can come to different conclusions, as apparently we have. I hope some day I can change your mind, as I’m sure you wish to change mine. Good day.

January 7, 2016

Ryan Lynn

Well at least you didn’t suggest he is the same as people who are into beheadings because he made a cogent point trying to explain the other side of the argument. That might mean that you are now less childish than when you posted the original blog entry but I somehow doubt it.

If you take “my child is more important than your gun” as a violent threat, and if you think that it’s justifiable to kill someone for trying to confiscate your gun – not because they want to kill people, but because it’s the law – then I’m really, really, really glad I don’t have to share my country with you, “Steven Seagal”.

Elisabeth, I’m happy to live in a country where you don’t get to decide how I protect myself (that includes protecting myself from the violent state). If you think total gun confiscation will protect you, then you must be unaware of the multiple attacks in France that killed hundreds of people which were committed with fully automatic machine guns, RPGs, and grenades. You might be willing to take the risk of that not happening to you, but you don’t get to make that decision for me.

Do you really, genuinely, honestly think if you’d been present during the Paris attacks, having a gun would have protected you? It’s not a force field. Best case scenario, your gun would have changed nothing; worst case scenario, you’d have fired on innocent people.

How do you think the police stopped the attackers? Did *they* have a force field, or did they use guns? Before you make an appeal to authority, you should look at the stats on how well-trained the average concealed carry holder is versus how often the average police officer goes to the range. Police hit plenty of innocent bystanders – the NYPD cops who shot *nine* innocent bystanders when aiming for one guy comes to mind.

If you’re okay waiting minutes for the police to arrive, that’s good for you, I won’t criticize you at all. But you don’t get to make that decision for me.

January 7, 2016

AnnieB

No more nesting 🙁

Nope. I’m afraid the way we Europeans see it is that if someone with a gun and terrorist designs comes into the place you are congregating, your number may well be up. Everyone’s panicking, you’re simply not going to be able to hit the shooter and avoid everyone else. So what do I need a gun for? It won’t save my life in an emergency. That may well be the way you imagine it going down, but you won’t have the clarity to shoot the right person and nobody else. The police have, as well as training, (which I accept that a civilian may have more of) backup, protective clothing, the advantage of coming at the shooter from outside, and also training with being in these situations. And even so, they didn’t always succeed. So I pretty much accept that if someone attempts a mass shooting where I’m hanging out, all I’ve got going for me is luck.

What is a comfort is that you’re meant to have a licence to own a gun over here. Sure, people own guns illegally and sometimes said people commit mass shootings (but honestly, the 2 Paris attacks in 2015 are the only ones I can think of in a long long time). But we have FAR fewer deaths by gunfire than the US, and gun deaths in the U.S. are frequently committed with firearms freely owned by people who wouldn’t be entitled to a licence over here. So yes, American gun culture is a problem.

However, none of this affects you. If gun licensing and background checks were introduced in the states you could own a gun! You could do your shooting practice and keep the gun in the house just in case. Nobody’s trying to take away your guns. As you’re already a responsible gun owner, presumably without a criminal record, you’re not a problem gun owner. But your advocating for the rights of irresponsible gun owners is problematic.

January 8, 2016

Elisabeth

We did have a (very small) terrorist attack in Canada recently. One guy with a gun, one person dead outside Parliament Hill. The security guards killed him, and since then, they’ve armed themselves more heavily.

Gun control doesn’t mean that we don’t have any form of protection from terrorism, it just means that you need to be in a job that allows you to arm yourself. We have shooting ranges, and civilians can own guns for hunting – however, an attack with a simple hunting rifle (as the Parliament Hill shooter used) will be less lethal than an attack with heavier weaponry. Gun control works better here than in the U.S. because it’s far more difficult to smuggle firearms across the border than to move them between states.

What is it that you’re even protecting yourself from? And on the off chance that you have some real, demonstrable concern for your safety, why do you think it is that your country possesses such dangers, whereas mine allowed me to live there for several decades, completely unarmed, without any such need to protect myself?

If you look at what people say about the TSA, they effectively have decided that their children are more important than their right against unreasonable searches and seizures. Is it really reasonable to subject everyone to radiation or MMW every time they fly? Is it reasonable when the TSA finds a small amount of drugs that they confiscate it and call the police? What does that have to do with securing an airplane?

People in the US generally say yes, these are reasonable things for our security. I personally don’t like where the lines are drawn here, but I am in the minority.

Yet if someone proposes the any sort of change in administration over gun ownership and the same people who willingly step into those scanners lose their mind.

All of our rights are guaranteed yet nearly all of them have had some “reasonable” restrictions placed to ensure a more orderly society. Why is the second amendment so much more precious? Especially when the amendment includes the words “well-regulated”?

The Second Amendment is guarded fiercely because it’s the emergency brake against tyranny; it’s the only thing that gives the citizenry teeth against the gov’t trampling the rest of the rights in the Bill of Rights (votes don’t matter if the gov’t decides to stop recognizing them).

As you said, our gov’t has already ripped up a lot of our civil rights (including Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights) through things like the Patriot Act, secret FISA courts, NDAA of 2012, the latest one being CISA.

The Second Amendment is really there because the founders recognized a right of people to abolish their government when it no longer suits them – they said as much in the Declaration of Independence (“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it”). Unfortunately governments have a habit of not going “quietly into that good night,” and violence becomes required to replace it – thus, Second Amendment.

The meaning of “well-regulated” in that era did not mean subject to gov’t regulation or meeting some standard of training set by the gov’t. Google it.

Seriously, my Spanish granny has been telling me how it reminded her of 1940s Spain when she was growing up. In Spain, plenty of men, women and children had been shot (or most often, snatched by guardias and forced into the back of cars for being ‘threats to security’) and then made to look like criminals by the authorities. That is tyranny, and it was intentionally done by Franco to further push the population into obedience and cut down any ‘rebellious’ behavior (and this Franco was once very paranoid. He once even ordered his men to hunt down and cull people who were literate, because it was easier to control people who couldn’t read or access information that wasn’t outright given to them by the authorities).

The Spanish civil war and Franco’s dictatorship was one of the heavy influences of Orwell’s Animal Farm–and it left a big scar in Spain where many, many families were demonized for having lost sons, daughters, spouses and parents because they were ‘criminals’. Because dictators can be very good at using the media to make people think that the deaths aren’t a big impact on their lives and that the deaths only happen to ‘bad people’.

Seriously, looking at you, something tells me that if you ever wind up in the 60s during the Civil Rights movement–when people were getting hosed, attacked by dogs and having their churches or homes set on fire, you probably wouldn’t have lifted a finger for the protesters.

Just as your right to move ends when your fist meets another person’s nose, your gun rights stop when they endanger public safety. Your individual safety does not trump public safety. But thanks for playing.

Not that the gun-humpers care much about individual safety either given their contempt for statistics about how owning guns tend to increase one’s chances of being harmed by them, whether at one’s own hands or at the hands of another. But the fantasy keeps them warm at night, and that’s all that matters in the end, I guess.

The state doesn’t get an unencumbered monopoly on force. The founders wanted to hedge against tyranny, and that’s what we have been given. Seeing as how batshit crazy-violent the US gov’t is both domestically (spying, drug wars, militarization of police) and abroad (multi-trillion dollar wars of aggression), I’d say they were right on the money.

The government is batshit crazy because of gun-humping nitwits voting for the very sort of politicians whom the gun lobby has bought to help cripple any attempts to regulate gun ownership. The more you think guns are the answer, the more you become the problem yourself. If you really want to put a check on insanity, stop buying guns and vote in people who will strengthen the government against intrusion by capitalist interests. Vote in people who don’t see themselves as crusaders or white saviors who need to unilaterally civilize the rest of the world. Vote in those who will take high powered weapons from the police, implement rational drug policies, and shutter agencies made for spying on our own citizens.

The people who control the government aren’t scared of “force” by citizens. They wouldn’t work so hard to keep you nitwits armed and terrified if they were. They’re scared all the pants-wetting chickenshits who buy guns under the delusions of action-heroism will wise up and make effective change by voting in a government that they can’t make sit up and bark whenever they want.

I do vote for those people when possible – Mark Pocan, my Representative, Russ Feingold, my former Senator, Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, and (hopefully) Rand Paul for President.

The problem is the tyranny of the majority; there are so many of my fellow citizens who vote for the psychopaths that it’s no wonder I feel the need to have to protect myself from them.

Republicans are awful on a lot of issues, however I’m guessing a lot of people here would vote for Hillary Clinton, who would be probably the worst in all the categories you mention. A war hawk who voted for the Iraq invasion, Patriot Act, was a big cheerleader for the Libya invasion (“we came, we saw, he died”), and is in Wall Street’s backpocket with all her campaign and Clinton Foundation[1] money from Goldman Sachs, defense contractors, et al.

The system is so rigged I just don’t know how you can write that I should vote with a straight face. Between first-past-the-post and gerrymandering, the system is corrupt from the ground up, designed to be ruled by the low information voter. It’s long past the point where it needs to be burned to the ground – preferably peacefully, of course.

Oh, good grief, of course you’re a Paul-worshipping libertarian. (Talk about low information voters!) You’re not going to divorce capitalism from politics by voting in libertarians. Keeping the two married at any cost is their goddamn reason for continuing to breathe. They just come cheaper than usual because they’re true believers in handing over the reins to corporate tyrants rather than mere opportunists. They’ll replace the police and spies with private agencies that do the same thing while answering to no one but themselves, and the rest of us will only be as “safe” and “free” as we can pay to be.

As for the system, it may be rigged, voting is still going to do exponentially more to fix it than buying guns, which will do nothing but increase the amount the gun lobby can spend on keeping the system rigged.

Lawful gun owners do actually care about public safety and are not the problem. Your statement is a complete red herring anyways because the people who you need to worry about in regards to guns (the criminals) don’t care about public safety at all, let alone their personal safety.

It is so much harder to stab or beat 26 people to death, than it is to spray bullets into a crowd from a safe distance. It’s easier to escape, survive or subdue an attack by someone using a short-range or melee weapon.

Guns are specifically designed to be extremely efficient killing tools.
That’s why we don’t arm our fucking soldiers with knives and cars.

I’m also sick of people using the Mental Illness canard to avoid talking about gun regulation.

What the fucking fuck?? I knew that some pro-gun people don’t care about dead children (or worse, think that the Sandy Hook shooting was a government set-up), but I didn’t know that they also found child molestation funny.

Unfortunately, none of the other comments surprise me. The NRA and their supporters are monsters. I’m in Canada, and they still scare me.

The funny thing here is saying all the things you just said, Jenny, does not necessarily equate to banning guns outright. Ammosexuals see gun ownership as some sacred untouchable right to the point a reasonable conversation can no longer be had on gun control. They cite the second amendment without even considering context (firearms then had nowhere near the efficiency they do today, and then there’s that whole “well regulated militia” bit). Quite frankly, these paranoid yahoos itching to shoot a “bad guy” and prove they’re John McClane (Treyvon Martin case, anyone?) are just as scary as these “bad guys” they’re so afraid of. Any look at gun violence statistics in the US should be a wake-up call to Americans, and I’m saying this as someone who isn’t against gun ownership but pro-reasonable gun laws.

As an American and a (multiple) gun owner, I would like to point out that there are many of us who saw/see nothing wrong with your statement. I love that I can go target shooting or hunting with my guns (almost) any time I want, but that includes a great deal of responsibility which I am happy to exercise. Having fuckwits like these ammosexuals completely lose it over a statement that said NOTHING about taking their guns away or anything like that is embarrassing and makes me facepalm so hard. It’s like being a responsible pitbull/bully breed owner and working so hard to make sure your dogs are well-behaved and awesome with other animals and people, and then watching that one a-hole with untrained, awful dogs come around and ruin everything.

Speaking as a longtime Twitter user: Twitter is home to a lot of troll sockpuppet accounts; if you pick any side in a popular hashtag schism and you’re bound to get some venomous barbs thrown your way. It’s just the nature of anonymous commenting and the modern World Wide Web.

The vast, vast majority of firearm owners are just as responsible as you, Anne. Firearm ownership is way up while firearm violence is continuing a long trend of decreasing.

Except you don’t really feel that confident, do you? Look at you, you’re terrified. If you were really this confident about winning, all this talk about gun safety wouldn’t send you into such an unhinged, mouth-foaming rage. You’re showing yourself as a terrified little man who doesn’t have the balls to face life without a weapon to hide behind. You’re a failure.

January 8, 2016

Bill Harrison

No, the facts are shown in the publically available National Instant Check System (NICS) records. Admittedly not every check ends with the ownership of a new gun, but, hopefully these figures will show the pattern of the INCREASE in intent to own new guns:
For brevity, I will only share every other year and only rounded to the nearest .1 million.
1999 – 9. 1 million, 2001 – 8.9, 2003 – 8.4, 2005 – 9.0, 2007 – 11.1, 2009 – 14.0 (Obama’s 1st year in office), 2011 – 16.5, 2013 – 21.1 (Obama’s 2nd term), 2015 – 23.1.
Dec 2015 broke all previous records for NICS with 3.3 million in just that one month.
Where is any evidence of a decrease in the ownership of firearms?
Obama has been hearled as being the nation’s greatest gun salesman!

Police firearms are not included in NICS numbers, unless the officer individually purchased his / her weapon.

January 9, 2016

makfan

Yeah. The problem is that we hear from the extremists every time any proposal is made about gun control. There are many responsible owners like yourself. The extremists make me so angry, though. How can anyone with a straight face not concede we have a big problem here? No proposal is going to get us from 30,000 deaths by gun to zero, but we can sure get that number much closer to zero than where we are today.

I’m a baffled Australian. I cannot for the life of me understand the obsession Americans have with owning guns. And how utterly nutty they are prepared to sound in their defense of it. I have dear friends from the States that are convinced they are safer if they own a gun.
I feel like they must have been instilled with this fear on a subtle level because these women are wicked intelligent. Out of this small group I have one friend who lives in Alaska and legit uses her guns to shoot snaked and bears and things. I am able to understand that. But the others? I dont get how having a gun makes you safer. I wish there were statistics that showed how many home invasions, rapes and assaults were prevented by a gun owner.
The only sensible argument I have heard to date is how it will be significantly more difficult in the US because it borders Mexico.. but it has just occurred to me that Canada is the same land mass as well and they manage to have gun control in their bit of the land. SO now I am left with no reasonable arguments.
Its really really unfathomable. But I do feel better to know that it isnt some national affliction. Good luck with your gun control laws, I hope they get through.

No they’re not. Numerous international organisations publish figures on how unsafe gun ownership makes the general populace.
I agree with our Australian friend. To the rest of the world, these arguments just look insane.

I dont understand your sentence, are you suggesting that there are statistics proving thousands of crimes are averted by gun owners? I would love to see that research.
And see it compared with the amount of gun related deaths and see if there is any sense to the self defense argument. To be honest though, the stats would need to show me that NO ONE got raped or murdered or robbed to make it balance out the lives of all those school children murdered every year.

If 10000 stopped their homes being burgled, I would consider that a poor reason to allow hundreds of children to be slaughtered in their schools.

The problem is that they don’t view guns as a thing. The gun represents their fantasies of being heroes or being special or having control over the world around them so that they can protect the people they care about and avenge wrongs. Take away the gun and you take away the fantasy.

The gun fantasy also promises a lack of risk. The vast majority of civilian heroes are dead. Why? Because the heroes are the ones who throw themselves in the line of fire to tackle the bad guy to the ground. The heroes get shot first. The gun ownership fantasy promises that you can be a powerful hero while staying conveniently outside the line of fire yourself. You won’t have to be scared.

And let’s face it, the world is scary.

And it’s all too easy for people to act like jerks on social media. You’d think that they’d have figured out by now that it’s self-destructive, but no. We never learn.

As far as I’m concerned, everyone’s right to be safe and alive trumps my right to live out my power fantasies.

Another problem is that many of these people think they can use the weapon as a part of their anger-response toolkit. (Think Michael Dunn, and how he just got angry at the whippersnapper int he next car for playing the loud music)

That, and they see their guns as their penis. It’s all they have to make them feel like men. Take that away, and all you have left is some scared, angry, wimpy little cowards who know they’re nothing without a weapon to hide behind. They’re failures as men and deep down, they know it. That’s why they bluster so much about “taking down the bad guys” and “protecting their families”. It’s a hero fantasy, as you say. Sprouted by the kinds of impotent losers who would never have the balls to be heroes outside of their deluded little imaginings.

The sick thing is that gun sales will probably just spike again, like they did after Sandy Hook. These people watched that that unfold and their first thought was about how they needed to protect their GUNS. It seriously makes me ill.

my husband super loves guns. just really loves them, thinks they’re great, used to be a member of the NRA. wants to teach our son to shoot, wants to go hunting, etc etc.

he really loves guns.

but i bet you fucking anything, ANYTHING, that if i asked him “which is more important, your guns or your son?” he would look at me like my brain fell out of my skull in front of his face. he would answer something along the lines of “are you serious? that’s a stupid question! of course the loud, rambunctious, pain in the ass you gave birth to is more important?????? why wouldn’t he be???” and then because he’s not stupid, “some dumbass said that guns were more important didn’t they? jfc those assholes ruin everything.”

i don’t actually have to ask him (i totally will though, i want to see how close i got), though. because a couple years ago he sold i think all of his guns. he might have one left? i honestly don’t think so, but i never look in the safe. anyway, he sold them because ends weren’t meeting and we needed food. he didn’t hem and haw, he just called up a buddy he knew would be interested and sold them right off. because they weren’t more important. not even close.

and i asked him, and i was wrong. he didn’t look at me like my brain fell out. he just no-hesitation said “my kid.” and then i told him about the twitter weirdos and he had the look on his face i expected.

neither of us can fathom someone thinking that a gun is more important than a human.

I would have the same answer, but not just for my own child. If I could give up every gun I’ve ever owned in my life, every experience or bit of “pleasure” I’ve ever got from firing a gun, if it would mean that a child would never be harmed by a gun again, or if that could bring back just one child that was killed by a gun, I would do that in a heartbeat. Not even a question.

But disarming the population in the long-term won’t work out nicely. There are small homogenous countries, where the police and gov’t attitudes closely reflect the populace where that tends to work out roughly okay (although it might just be a local minima, and change in the long-term).

But the USA is not that. Our federal gov’t is violent and disconnected from the people. It spies on us domestically, trampling on our civil rights. It ruins lives and pulls families apart by a brutal drug war with harsh minimum sentencing guidelines. It conducts multi-trillion dollar wars of aggression against countries that don’t deserve it, resulting in blowback terrorist attacks against the population, which it uses to feed into the previous cycle of violence and spying against the average citizen. It also subsidizes left-over weapons of war (MRAPs, assault rifles, grenade launchers, night vision goggles, etc.) to local police departments, setting a tone and raising tensions for more violence against us civilians.

No, the US gov’t is the nightmarish leviathan that the founders predicted exactly, and they were right to have the Second Amendment.

With all due respect our government (in Australia) is as much of an ass as yours can be. We are a multi cultural society that often seethes with unrest and our government are FOREVER trampling on our democratic rights, except of course our democratic right is only to vote to the government, but I know what you meant.
This is another bizarre argument that makes no sense from the outside. Like honestly, if your government is violent and that’s why you have guns, what are you actually going to use them for? Killing all the politicians, if so, that just puts you in the crazy person who ought not own a gun territory wouldnt it?
And wouldnt you rather be oppressed than worry about your kids being murdered? Like if the oppression consists of living in a first world country where you can actually choose how you wish to interact with society and be treated accordingly.

January 7, 2016

AltoFronto

But… the political party that allows you the most lax guns is also the most intent on harsh sentencing, and waging foreign wars, and increasing income inequality, and arming your police with military surplus…

So gun nuts who vote Republican to keep their lax gun laws, are also voting for all the tyrannical stuff that makes them determined gun owners in the first place?

January 7, 2016

Steven Seagal

@Lisa With respect, Australia is not on our level of crazy. Just by one measure, the recent wars abroad cost Australia in the low tens of billions. The USA will have spent nearly 4,000 billion (4 trillion if you prefer) on the same. Nor does your gov’t doesn’t have anything near the spying power of the NSA.

You bring up diversity; our demographics are also quite a bit different when comparing ethnic groups – Australia is 92% white / 7% Asian while USA is 64% white / 16% Hispanic / 12% black / 5% Asian. I’m not familiar enough with Australian politics to go any deeper than that.

“if your government is violent and that’s why you have guns, what are you actually going to use them for? Killing all the politicians, if so, that just puts you in the crazy person who ought not own a gun territory wouldnt it?”

Yes, that’s how the founders thought we should use them – as a means of self defense from state violence. If the aggressor (the state) has the means to severely regulate or outright ban them, then self defense is no longer possible. That’s why the Second Amendment is part of our Bill of Rights – no government can deprive their free citizens of their right of self defense from the state; it’s a civil liberty.

“And wouldnt you rather be oppressed than worry about your kids being murdered? Like if the oppression consists of living in a first world country where you can actually choose how you wish to interact with society and be treated accordingly.”

That’s an interesting thought experiment; I’m already tolerating quite a bit of (aforementioned) oppression from the US gov’t without openly resisting. But there is definitely a threshold which would make me resist, as I’m sure you have your own towards your gov’t. Honestly if I trusted our gov’t, I would be totally fine with gun control as I’m an outstanding citizen. But the point of the Second Amendment is that you can’t trust the gov’t, which ours has proven in spades.

As an Australian I think you bring a great viewpoint here which is that guns are hugely driven by culture. It’s clear you have a hard time even understanding why Americans like guns; the reason is it’s just part of our culture. If you wanted Lisa, you could go to your local hardware store and build a simple Sten gun using imprecise tools and parts. Any Australian could. But Australians wouldn’t do that – while I wager Americans would, if our guns magically and suddenly disappeared – and the reason for that is purely culture.

@AltoFronto First, I’m not a Republican. I voted for a Democrat (Mark Pocan) as my Representative due to his strong record on civil liberties and foreign policy. If I had to label myself I’d probably choose anarchist or minarchist.

Second, you’re vastly oversimplifying (although as a not-Republican I would agree that Republicans are a bit worse). Look at the roll call vote for the latest civil rights violating law, CISA: Democrats were the ones pushing that bill (not my man Pocan though). The two major parties we have have blended together so much that it’s just another indicator on how you can’t rely on this dysfunctional government to uphold our rights, much less represent our interests.

January 7, 2016

Starlight

China has extremely strict gun control laws. Say what you want about their government, but at least in this they’re pretty firm (death penalty firm).

January 8, 2016

drmaggiemoreau

My journalist professor told me a disturbing statistic- preschoolers are more likely to get shot than an on duty cop. It’s good somebody is putting the facts and safety of their children first.

A friend of mine has been working tirelessly with a grassroots organization called “Nebraskans Against Gun Violence.” She deal with this level of threats and harassment on a daily basis. You might find her articles enlightening, or perhaps they’ll only tell what you’ve already figured out. In any case, here’s a list of her Salon articles:

It’s amazing how these gun nuts are too stupid to realise how they’re proving that they’re the kind of sociopathic toddlers who should not be allowed anywhere near a gun. Yes, gun nuts, threaten to shoot people who talk about gun safety. That’ll – somehow prove you right. Idiots.

Jenny, I was reading a news story this morning about N.Korea’s claim to having tested a nuke. The story included quotes from N.Korean citizens to the effect of, if it wasn’t for tests like these and their governments protection, “we would be slaves to the US by now.” I couldn’t help but be dumbfounded and deeply saddened that these poor, unfortunate people really believed these lies to be true. But I could understand it because N.Korean citizens are very much sheltered and brainwashed by their government. Reading you post just now, I had the same reaction to the gun crazies. The only difference is that the gun crazies are not sheltered, or at least they don’t have an excuse to be. As a Canadian, I can’t really understand how these people have come to their point of view, or how they have become so brainwashed. But I suppose they are surrounded by others who affirm their thinking.

From Canada, all this debate seems completely insane. After each shooting, Canadians always say, surely they will wake up now and reform their views/laws on guns, right?! And it never happens. The power of the gun lobby, ignorance and using fear to brainwash is truly frightening.

It’s the idiot up there who said “I’m armed….nothing can scare me ” that exposes it, though. He needs guns to keep him from feeling scared. They’re his blankie, his pacifier, his guardian against things that go bump in the night. They are what enable him to feel like a tough manly-man. Taking his guns away would emasculate him, leave him insecure and vulnerable, and he can never face that. Gun culture is the ne plus ultra of toxic masculinity.

Absolutely spot on! These guys are failures as men, and taking away their little toys will expose them as the failures they are for them and everyone to see. They’ll no longer have their toys to convince them they’re the tough manly men they so desperately want to convince people they are.

That’s exactly it. This is something I’ve been trying to explain to my dad that I couldn’t articulate. They never want to talk about home security systems, or even make sure everyone can use a gun correctly. They just want the gun, no questions asked. A couple months ago, Dr Drew had a show on gun control, and this annoying guy got really shrill every time someone would even suggest resonable gun rules (i.e. Keep it clean, away from children, etc.) His default line was that he was ex military and he was ~entitled~ and HDU take my guns, I protect people, plus all the other cliches. Guns don’t protect people. Guns injure and kill living creatures. Used correctly, they may stop a dangerous person from harming innocents, but they hurt people when used. Therefore, they should be used carefully, seldom, and kept out of daily life.

My dad is pro gun, and I asked him why he didn’t have guns himself. He was like “I’m very anxious and I have poor eyesight/hearing! What if I panicked at a noise in the middle of the night and I accidentally shot you or your mother? What if there was a burglar and I wasn’t able to aim correctly and he took my gun?” My dad, as pro gun as he is, knows guns aren’t magical force fields that keep you from harm.

If you could hear it I would applaud you Jenny. So much truth here. What really resonated with me is that you point out that they always act like we’re just all hurt feelings and irrational when they scream about all whoever the current boogeyman in their mind is coming to get them. That’s something that’s occurred to me too, but I’ve never seen it expressed before.

One of the tweets that annoyed me, a minor complaint seeing the outright threats you got, is the one that said “Firearms are part of American life” No, sir. Not my American life.

Jenny I am sorry. My gun is more important then what results of sex. If you and me were wife and husband, I would explain that my gun is greater then you selfish wants. If you wish to abandon me, then you leave me with my child. I will go to court and ask.

Do I wave it round while it is loaded?
Do I bring it to the table when we argue?
Do I point it at strangers?
Do I play the worst cop in the world and make videos of myself dancing around with it in front of minorities?
Do I mimic scenes or imagery in movies?
Did I rob a store to bring bread home to you?

So you could leave me and my child and my gun, and go find a man who is willing to submit to you

Then we could be back in court, while you try and get custody. I am a good man, a good father and here is my wife who does not want to be in the same house because of my tool, I use for self-defense or sport if I have to.

Responsibility. We can’t say omgsh it is a gun, we need to run back and forth like chickens about the subject.

Most sever gun-violence accounted for is caused by

1. Psychologist prescribing suicide drugs. My cousin had to be in a mental institution due to being assault. They did not help her. They just gave her drugs. It has been shown that all shootings are related to prescribed drugs in the case of ADHD.

2. No alpha male and verbal abusive situation.

3. The Federal government ( Name your favorite three letter agency ) opening fire on a sect ( Religious structure ) with women and children inside of it. This resulting in a retaliation.

Point being is that guns never did anything wrong to anybody unless it was used for selfish wrongful purposes.

Like how USA sending weapons to Israel during the 1972 Oil Crisis.

Like how USA in the Korean war which was started by executions of communist people. Which caused the North to attack.

Like what Europe did to the Orient and divided nations.

Like how the British treated India. Which resulted in the Gandhi stepping in. Which resulted in the Indian-Civil-War. Which resulted in his murder.

Like how my uncle was associated with a bunch of suit wearing type. He did not know it but they went to a place to hurt somebody. He called the police to report the dying man. The man who was shot and a witness ( a woman ) fingered him as the shooter. He spent over thirty years in jail for staying behind and calling the police. Which saved the mans life.

A man brought a gun home and showed his wife. She was so afraid and consulted her brother to look at it. She hide it. When it was found the gun was not operational so she started to be her usually bitchy, annoying, big-mouth, negative attitude self.

I guess just by having a gun around the household a woman will actually start acting like a woman. What does she have to fear from her husband dear????

You think the world revolves around what comes out of your vagina. You think again.

“A man brought a gun home and showed his wife. She was so afraid and consulted her brother to look at it. She hide it. When it was found the gun was not operational so she started to be her usually bitchy, annoying, big-mouth, negative attitude self.

I guess just by having a gun around the household a woman will actually start acting like a woman. What does she have to fear from her husband dear????”

There is something deeply wrong with you if you think the presence of a gun should ensure “proper” behavior in a household.

YOU are the reason gun laws need to be stricter, and enforced.

Safe gun ownership is fine. Its people like you who give responsible gun owners a terrible name.

RegalSin — You really think you would get custody of your child after telling the judge that you believe your gun is more important than the life of the child? Not only would you not get custody, it’s quite likely that you would be ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

He’ll sprout all that mentally unbalanced bullshit in court, and then when he’s rightly deprived custody of his child, he’ll whine and cry that the court deprived him of custody because they discriminate against men. Not because he’s a dangerous psychopath who has abuser written all over him.

Congrats for proving the point that we need stricter gun control laws to protect others from people like you who think they can intimidate others into submission. Children and women are worth more than your gun.

NO. That is bullshit, especially “point” number 1. You show me your source for that, because I can find tons of sources that say otherwise. Also, ADHD? REALLY? “suicide drugs”? “It has been shown that all shootings are related to prescribed drugs in the case of ADHD”?

Poor worthless, impotent little abuser. Like all gun nuts, you’re nothing more than a wimpy little coward, and as you’ve shown here, you’re terrified of women and need a gun to protect yourself against the possibility of a woman being less than womanly, ie talking back to you and destroying your fantasies that you’re a wise, all-knowing god who actually matters.

wtf does that even mean. These people are sicks. Guns are horrible things that are only meant to cause harm and death. They serve no other purpose. We should work towards creating a world where we don’t run to pull the trigger, work towards a solution instead of using the weirdo bandaid that is the gun, which obviously further infects the wound. You can’t mend a broken bone with more blows to it, that’s a gone, it’s a blunt ugly object wounding our already fractured and mislead society.

Are you for real? There is so much wrong with what you just said, my brain caught on fire. I needed to induce a brain freeze.

“Guns never did anything wrong”.
1. Guns rarely accidentally discharge, but they can kill people when they do.
2. You kind of made the case for yourself- if guns don’t hurt people when they are properly used, cared for, and stored, then gun control will make guns, say it with me, SAFER.

Why should a woman fear her husband? Would you want to be afraid of your wife? Then why should I fear my husband? Because I might disagree with him and challenge him at times? Basically, if a woman uses sarcasm or talks in ways people don’t like, you’re saying there’s something wrong with that, and the solution is to threaten them with a gun?

Please don’t get married. Don’t have children. You think the privilege of gun ownership is the pinnacle of existence? That is nothing compared to having love in your life. Nothing.

Coming from a very right wing family of gun nuts and military people, ammosexual people frighten the hell out of me.

I’m all for responsible gun ownership. I’ve been known to enjoy shooting holes in pieces of paper with circles on them and empty bottles/cans. Great stress relief that gets my frustration out in a way that doesn’t hurt me or anyone else. I’m also pro stricter gun control laws.

Much as I HATE children (I truly and honestly do both the culture around having kids and kids themselves in general though specific kids I generally don’t have issues with), I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment.

And any and all people who try to say that mentally ill/unstable people perpetuate violence, you’re spouting a bunch of horseshit. I’ll quote myself from twitter from the one I jumped in on.

(reply that had me inflamed enough to respond to): “Your child isn’t in danger of a gun.. OUR children are in dagger of mentally unstable people that cant get help in our country!”

My uncle owns a LOT of guns. And some of them I have no problem with him owning. Because they’re actual guns from the American Civil War. Or from the Vietnam conflict (and are Vietnamese weapons). Or the Korean conflict (and are also Korean weapons). Or from WW 1&2 and are both American weapons and other countries weapons. And those ones are really cool to look at (none of them are operational except a few of the late WW2 ones). And honestly if you just have them to show off because they’re cool bits of history, I have no problem with that. Personally I have more of a thing for bladed weapons. That said, my weapons are all in places that children can’t get to and hurt themselves or others with. However, they’re also because I use to go to ren faires ALL THE TIME and it was part of my character. AND I was training with SCA to do actual sword fighting. So they had a more practical purpose than the current “they just sit there collecting dust and looking pretty”.

I HATE how much the second amendment is misquoted by these people. Saying that you don’t need guns is not equivalent to taking away free speech. Or any other false equivalences that they come up with.

I especially hate how fearful I have to be if I travel to an open carry state and I DARE turn someone down for a date. Because I’m seen as female. Because of course I have no right to say no because someone deemed me fuckable (because I do fall in that “fat so you should feel grateful” category of people). And of course if I got hurt/shot/killed/maimed/etc it would automatically be all MY fault. For some reason that isn’t a reason but victim blaming.

Ammosexual people make me so frustrated I want to cry. Especially since I have a few of them in my family. I get it if you’re living in a more remote-ish type place and get larger predatory animals on your property and need a way to discourage or kill them. I get it if you prefer to go hunt and kill your own food. I’m perfectly ok with that. It’s the protection people that worry me the most. And MAKE ME uneasy enough that I can’t go out anywhere close to night time without a knife on me. Hell, I go out in broad daylight with knives on me. BECAUSE I’ve had people threaten violence against me. And most of the time, 99.999999% of the time, it’s threats of gun violence. The .0000001% of the time is physical violence or rape. And I don’t live in an open carry state. Or a state where it’s easy to obtain guns and/or carry permits let alone concealed carry unless military or police and even then still kind of difficult when they’re off duty to get concealed carry. AND I live in between at least 5 active duty military bases and have an inactive duty military base in my city (that my dad works at).

We should NOT be living in a country with this much fear. The DARE program was useless to us because we don’t have a drug problem out here. In fact, I know 3 people in my entire city who’d be able to tell me where to get drugs (and one of them is medical only so….) and no where in my city is where you can get them (it’s one of our bordering cities). We should have had talks on guns and gun violence instead. It would have been a hell of a lot more effective I think. And I only think that because the big county jail about 2 hours away minimum from me drops all their damn inmates in my city. Yet we don’t have a gang violence problem. We have a few stupid idiots with guns problem. And 2 years ago a few stupid idiots trying to make butane based honey oil in their garages problem (a house on my street even blew up from that. Got some great photos of it). (and yes, stupid idiot to use butane to make that. It’s the least safe way to do it. I can tell you that from a 5 minute google search and wikipedia reading).

The state that scares me the most though? Florida. Because of the stand your ground law and how widely it’s misused and how many people use it to fuel their paranoia. And how it’s used to work against people using it for that reason (see: women of colour and women of colour who are trans using guns to protect themselves from men abusing them and shooting the ceiling and then getting jailed. see: george zimmerman with trayvon martin and zimmerman’s terror campaign against the women he’s abused and then threatened into silence and dropping any and all charges against him).

I do NOT get the love of guns these people have. Hell, were the government to come to me and say I could keep my small pocketknives (which are actually swiss army knives and I use the corkscrew more than anything else) but my swords and daggers needed to be turned in I’d go ahead and do that. (Pocket knife give up isn’t even in the question of reasonable as they’re handy as shit when I get stuff. Or can’t find my scissors. Or am too lazy to get the orange peeler out so I can peel my oranges (cause I don’t have nails). Or get yet another job in which I’m expected to open tightly taped boxes without being issued a box cutter of some sort.

The people flooding your mentions yesterday in response to that tweet made me want to gather them all up into a rocket and shoot them into the sun.

You really don’t understand the laws, real defensive gun use or gun safety.

Guns are dangerous (that is makes them good defensive tools). The law allows for there use to stop a violent attack. Leaving then returning into the house is starting an attack, not stopping one. If you feel shooting the wall is a solution, then you are not in fear of your life, because then you shoot the person.

All stand your ground does is remove the requirement to prove that you couldn’t have run away safely. Because there is no way to do that.

The one that tickled me was, “My child is more important that your paranoid need to control others.”

Soooo…owning guns for “protection” on the off chance that someone breaks into your house with murderous intent isn’t paranoid (and using them isn’t controlling), but concern for the welfare of your own children in a toxic culture is. Okayyyy…

So after all of that, how does it feel to have accomplished nothing? I still have, and carry my guns. I still own an AR15. I still have multiple 30 round magazines for it. My wife is learning to shoot. I’ve taught others to shoot. Together with the state level pro civil rights group here in North Carolina, we’ve increased our civil rights by repealing gun laws.

What have you accomplished? Aside from standing on the sidelines?

Oh, and our children are more important to us than your children are to us. So we protect them the best way we know how. By education, training, and vigilance. You may raise yours any way you see fit. We don’t have any particular need to dictate how you care for your children. It is unfortunate that you feel no need to understand your fellow citizens before dismissing their legitimate concerns. It speaks of a person who “believes” instead of “understands.”

I would think we have enough people in this world who have blind faith rather than understanding. Yet you dismiss us as stupid, uneducated, and deluded because we don’t agree with your conclusions. Not a very liberal attitude.

This is why you have lost. You don’t understand, so you cannot reach those who differ from you. You lecture, you hectoring, you ridicule. And we laugh and ignore you. Anni teach the fearful, the untrained, and the simply unexposed to guns. And there are tens of thousands like me. We grow, you stagnate, and we win.

Thank you for posting your picture in your avatar, because it made the image of you yelling a triumphant “Huzzah!!!!” as you punched the Post button even funnier. Did you wave your AR15 around to celebrate your victory for a while afterward?

Why should I do something as silly as that? Why would you imagine I should do something as silly as that? Where do you come up with such strange ideas? Has it occurred to you that you aren’t debating with gun owners in reality so much as debating with the imaginary gun owners that only exist in your head?

You sure put a lot of words into affirming your own ego, without actually addressing the point of the OP, didn’t you?

She’s “achieved nothing”, and yet you still had to go out of your way to passive-aggressively rub her nose in your opinion. Men can’t resist making their opinions known, especially if they think they can invalidate a woman’s well-constructed argument.

I don’t think it displays lack of understanding to find your reasons for opposing tighter gun regulation to be myopic, unfounded, or distasteful.

When I understand her completely, because I have studied and listened and been lectured to on this subject by the gun control side for all of my adult life, and she displays a total lack of understanding of what motivates and drives people like me, then I can say that she does not understand people like me.

Sun-Tsu says “It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”

We gun owners, especially people like me in the leadership, make it a point to listen carefully to what those who dislike guns and gun owners actually say. We know our enemies. We know ourselves. Guess who doesn’t take the time to know us at all? People who refuse to get off their talking point of “my child is more important than your gun.”

OK, so what are you going to do about that? The answer is “nothing.” Or, more accurately, “continue to lose.”

It doesn’t really matter. I’m not going to be enraged by this, so it’s not worth her effort. That’s her plan. Keep refusing to engage seriously. Ignore the serious people, piss off those easily pissed off, point to them and say “SEE! LOOK AT THESE PEOPLE WHO SHOULDN’T HAVE GUNS!” as if getting mad at someone on the internet is the same as shooting them. One wonders at the mindset of a person who believes that it is a short step between Twitter Rage! and a gun battle. Anyone who thinks that getting mad on Twitter is a gateway to murder should probably get a mental evaluation, because they are probably projecting their own mental problems on others.

Why did I take the time to rub her nose in the fact that she’s losing? Why do blacks rub KKK members noses in the fact that they can sit at the lunch counter? Why do the Patriot Guard Riders show up to rev their engines at the Wesboro Baptist Church? Because telling bigots that they are bigots is fun.

Hopefully there are some here who can be reached. Hopefully there are some here who will read the words and say, “He doesn’t sound like a trailer trash redneck like they all told me he would. He sounds educated. He actually sounds smarter than most of the other commenters.” It won’t happen today, but maybe in a month or a year or five, they’ll have a gun owning friend and they’ll find themselves at a range, shooting a gun, and they’ll be gun owners. And there will be one less anti-gunner in the world.

Australia, England, Ireland, India? Yeah, we’re coming for you guys too. That’s why we see so many of you (mostly Australians) in our comments sections complaining about guns. Because even you can see that our gun rights arguments are starting to take hold in your countries. Logic, facts, statistics. They will win over your emotional arguments in the long run. You are on the wrong side of history.

First off, I’m a gun owner. I bought a 9mm and a shotgun, but knew I couldn’t just leave it at that, so I took a lot of classes taught by ex-LAPD SWAT officers. So, background on me.

There are a few cases where the gun can protect you, namely when you can detect the threat ahead of time and have time enough to prepare by retrieving and readying the weapon for use. Like the case where the young widowed mother had a 6 month old and the bad guys were storming her house for her dead hubby’s drugs. They pounded at the door for a half hour before they eventually broke in, at which point she had the shotgun out & ready and solved the problem.

Great. That’s one scenario.

The next, there’s nothing you can do . The bad guys get the jump on you, have their weapons out at at your head before you know what’s happening. Your weapon won’t do diddly at that point, because even if you’re carrying it, any motion to get it will allow the other guys to shoot first. Doesn’t help your family if you’re dead.

Similar situation, the ‘bad guy’ takes your loved one hostage and puts his head behind hers. Maybe once every 5 seconds pokes one eye out behind her. Your weapon is out, you have it at the low ready. Can you take that shot in 5 seconds? Most people think they can do it. I thought I could. Nope. I killed the hostage. (it was the hostage rack simulator, the ‘hostage’ was cardboard and the shooter was behind it.)

Think your AR15 will “protect” the house? OK, what do you do when there are 5 to 10 guys outside with AR15’s shooting at you inside? So far we’ve seen criminals that are pretty stupid, but you never know when they’ll actually get smart.

Another thing that frightened me was the scenario when an intruder breaks into the house and finds my gun, then uses it on me if I happen to come home at that unfortunate moment. Or he uses it for another crime somewhere else. I don’t have kids, but if I did I’d want to keep them away from the guns. So the gun goes into the gun safe. Yeah, it takes me that much more time to get it out, but at least it can’t be used against me.

So yeah, if the intruders are stupid and announce their presence and give you time to get ready, you’re gold. But if they get the jump on you or if they are smart, the gun doesn’t help. Really.

Oh, and there’s one condition I’d thought of where the gun actually could make things worse. Consider the guys in Texas who want to open-carry their long rifles into stores? (I kid you not, there’s an active group that WANTS to do this) Seems to me all a ‘bad guy’ has to do is wait for one of those clowns to show up at a store, walk up behind him, and shoot him in the head, then walk away with his long gun and ammo. It’s like the open carry guys WANT to put a target on their heads. Maroons, to quote Bugs Bunny.

And let’s not forget the ‘good Samaritan’ scenario like the ‘good guy’ in the Wal Mart that saw a ‘bad guy’ with a weapon. ‘Good guy’ pulled out his concealed gun, shot the ‘bad’ guy, but didn’t clear the area and didn’t realize the woman standing 10 feet away was the ‘bad’ guy’s partner who was robbing the store with him. So she shot the ‘good Samaritan’ and killed him.

There are too many variables. I’m not against weapons, but they’re useless without proper training. And the vast majority of buyers don’t get that training.

Your point being that “most problems in life don’t have a ‘gun’ solution?” Then we agree. If your point is “no one should be allowed to exercise their fundamental constitutional rights until they satisfy you that they have been ‘properly trained’,” then we will never agree.

You see, I trust that my neighbors will act like the same decent people with guns as they do without guns. I will do what I can to see that my neighbors are properly armed and secure at home and in the streets.

I do this because I love my neighbors as I love myself. As, I suspect, you do as well. One hopes that beneath all the fear of their neighbors, the people here will learn to love and trust their neighbors as I have.

January 7, 2016

mydogsPA

Sean, if neighbors did that to each other we wouldn’t need the guns to begin with. Look at Michael Dunn who used his weapon as an anger-management tool. Pulled into a convenience store and parked next to the Durango blaring loud music. Has the gall to tell the kids in the Durango to turn it down. S**t, they were there first! OF COURSE Jordan Davis is going to tell Dunn to f**k off. I would, too! The kid was probably tired of all those old fat white guys telling him what to do. (And I’m an old fat white guy and I’d agree with him!) Dunn just said “You’re not going to talk to me that way” and opened fire.

Same scenario in the movie theater where the ex-cop opened fire on the guy that tossed popcorn on him only because the shooter was mad that the victim was texting to his daughter DURING THE PREVIEWS and the shooter got angry (another fat old white guy).

So, no, I do NOT trust my neighbors will act like the same decent people with guns as they do without.

A weapon is NOT an anger management tool. So why can’t “training” (not to meet my criteria, but an accepted one by LEOs) fall under the ‘well regulated’ portion of the constitutional rights?

January 7, 2016

Steven Seagal

Can’t reply to your other post “well-regulated” doesn’t have anything to do with government regulation like you’re imagining it. That’s not what the phrase meant at the time the founders wrote it, nor is it supported by ancillary texts they wrote around that time.

Steven Seagal, let me use your link as a reference but let’s presuppose the term “well regulated” correlated to “operating properly” as your link suggests. At the time, clocks were very “high tech” and used “regulators” to ensure the timing errors were minimized so that the clock would be accurate over a daily, weekly, or if you were lucky, a monthly time period before they’d have to be reset. So “well regulated” meant “operating properly.”

OK, I can deal with that.

So the original term “well regulated militia” would then refer, nowadays, to a “properly operating militia,” correct? And as far as I know, a ‘militia’ is a GROUP of folks working together to serve as an army. This is a valid definition for back then as it is today, correct?

So I would posit that if that were the case, nowadays the second amendment has been perverted by modern interpretation to ensure that an INDIVIDUAL (not part of ANY militia group) has an inalienable right to own firearms even if they’re NOT part of a “properly operating militia.”

So how does keeping the whack-job of a nutcase loony from buying a weapon violate that if there’s no way that person could operate ‘properly’ in a militia?

January 7, 2016

AltoFronto

People who don’t like guns are your “enemies”?
Not just people you are indifferent to who are entitled to whatever opinions, or people you find tiresome, but your ENEMIES?

You don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, or that you’re threatening anyone, but your choice of words betrays a lot about your mindset.
It doesn’t matter if you’re educated – You’ve already phrased this in terms of hostility, and used the same word to describe “people who disagree with your politics” as a soldier uses to describe “people I need to shoot at”.

“one less anti-gunner in the world”, “we’re coming for you guys” – Your phrasing is like something from a shit action movie villain.

I’m glad there’s a very wide ocean between myself and you. And believe me, gun-nut culture is not going to be established in the UK any time soon. Not like you imagine it.

And we do have shooting clubs and ranges here, we just don’t see the need for assault weapons in the home, or open-carried into fast-food restaurants.
We’re frankly appalled by your Sandy Hooks, Oregons, and Auroras.

Actually, pretty sure Sun Zi never said the last bit. He’s only recorded to have said that you’ll win if you know yourself and your enemies. The rest is probably added on by westerners. I’ll admit I could be wrong, but that’s most likely a misquotation.

This is a position I can appreciate. It makes a lot more sense than “my gun is more important than your child.” In fact, I’d guess that this is what most of the responses would really have meant to say, had they been more well thought out and less reactionary. I don’t think that so-called “ammosexuals” truly believe that a gun is itself more valuable than the life of a child. I do, however, find it striking that the responses Jenny received were so aggressive. She obviously stirred up a lot of anger and fear

Your statement acknowledges that one reason some people get all up in arms (pun intended?) about their gun rights is because they value their lives and the lives of their children and, like you say, gun ownership is the best way they know to protect their families. Of course you value your children over my children. I would expect nothing else. Likewise, I value my children over yours. We happen to disagree on the best ways to protect our respective families. I want guns to be less accessible to everyone, you want guns to be accessible to you and others like you (aka: law abiding, responsible gun owners).

As long as we can acknowledge that we are coming from the same basic premise I think we have plenty of room for logical, well-reasoned, respectful discourse. Unfortunately, because that premise is “I value my own children over someone else’s,” people tend to get pretty animated and defensive. We are, after all, talking about our families and so the mamma and pappa bears in all of us are going to come out.

“As long as we can acknowledge that we are coming from the same basic premise I think we have plenty of room for logical, well-reasoned, respectful discourse.”

Here’s where that breaks down. If you wish to infringe upon my rights, you have to show several things.
1. That your infringement upon my rights is intended to bring about some good effect.
2. That this good effect is something that we can all agree is worth the infringement you propose.
3. That the infringement is the smallest infringement possible to gain this good effect.
4. That this good effect is actually going to happen and is not vaporware.

That’s why you can’t have what you want. You can’t show me how infringing further on my rights will have any effect upon crime rates that have already fallen to historically low levels. You do know that crime rates are at historically low levels, right? That murder rates are at their lowest rates in about a century. That we haven’t seen violent crime rates this low since before the Depression? That we have to go so far back in history that we’re actually concerned that the statistics we’re comparing to are not accurate due to lack of good record keeping?

We live in a society that is so amazingly peaceful that for you to complain that it’s too violent for you to trust more people with firearms is absurd! We’ve got more people than ever before walking freely about carrying guns than ever before in history. There are nearly half a million Concealed Handgun Permits active in North Carolina out of about 10 million people. That’s one in 20 people who have the legal permission to carry a gun basically wherever they like, whenever they like. This has NEVER happened in the history of mankind. And yet peace reigns like never before. Violence remains the province of the criminal classes. Mostly against each other. Occasionally they attack regular members of society, which is why I carry, and why I avoid any illegal behavior and anyone associated with crime. A fight avoided is a fight won.

The risks are tiny. But the stakes are my life. Until you can show me how your infringements will make the world a better place, the answer is “NO.” Because denying good people a way to defend themselves is unacceptable. Raising the cost in money and time for poor people, who are disproportionately people of color, is unacceptable. I’m white, middle class, middle aged, and reasonably respectable. I’ll always have a gun. But what about that poor black single mom who asked me how to get a Concealed Handgun Permit? Can she take “just one more law?” Or will that price her out of the self defense market? And who needs the gun more? Me? Or her? Do you want that on your conscience? Instead of trying to turn cash registers into crime detectors, why don’t you put criminals in prison? Why don’t you put the dangerously mentally ill in mental wards? Why not keep dangerous people off the street and let the not dangerous people own whatever guns they want? Because if you can’t be trusted with a gun, you can’t be trusted without a custodian.

I’ve been pretty much ignoring you, but now you’ve said the thing about putting the mentally ill in “mental wards,” which is like, 100% never an okay thing to say here for any reason not pertaining to discussions of Victorian literature. So I’m going to have to just step in and tell you that you look like the kind of guy who corners women at parties and forces them to watch your closeup magic tricks.

If you’re not David Copperfield, you need to change your turtleneck and get the fuck out of here.

” but now you’ve said the thing about putting the mentally ill in “mental wards,” which is like, 100% never an okay thing to say here for any reason not pertaining to discussions of Victorian literature.”

Stop lying, Trout.

I said,

“Why don’t you put the dangerously mentally ill in mental wards?”

That would be the DANGEROUSLY mentally ill.

You can have your own opinions, but you don’t get to lie about what I said.

January 7, 2016

JennyTrout

Or you’ll do what? Continue to run naked through my comment section with an American flag waving behind you and a copy of the Constitution curled around your erect member, shooting your guns into the sky? If you don’t like the way I’m running things here, move to a Canadian blog, commie.

Or I’ll call you a liar, prove it, and continue to allow you to demonstrate how little fidelity to facts and logic you have.

Look, you and I both know you’re little more than an internet troll, principally famous for being a giant jerk on Goodreads. But there are people here who might not know that. They might stumble in and mistake you for a reasonable person. Each time I catch you in a lie, call you on it, and you react like an utter fool, you destroy your credibility.

It’s up to you. You can try to stick to the facts and try to win the argument with facts, logic, and some appeal to emotion, or you can fall back on angry internet troll tactics, destroy your credibility with another group, and push yet another few people into the pro-gun camp. Which do you choose?

January 7, 2016

Steven Seagal

Is “mental ward” a derogatory term? I know “asylum” conjures up some bad imagery but I thought terms like “psych ward” or “mental ward” are acceptable? (Serious question – I’m ignorant)

January 7, 2016

JennyTrout

You probably need to do some more stalking, Sean. I am no where near active on goodreads. There is a website called “stopthegoodreadsbullies” you probably found me on, but if you read their articles you would have found out that they’re mad about what I write on *this blog*. So it’s not like the information you’re trying to expose here is any secret at all.

Further, I’m not trying to “win the argument.” I’m not arguing with you. Saying, “I think you look like David Blaine’s slightly more boring cousin” is not an argument. It’s an insult. It’s not my fault that you’re not aware of the difference.

January 7, 2016

JennyTrout

Seagal, it’s less the term, more the suggestion that violently mentally ill people should be locked up. It actually sounds like common sense on the surface, until you realize how easy it is for any mentally ill person to be considered a “danger”. Mentally ill people who are convicted of violent crimes they’ve already perpetrated already go to secure treatment facilities if their insanity plea is accepted. Locking up people for crimes they might commit in the future is a step too far.

January 7, 2016

khan

(applause)

And, re, sean – the ~dangerously~ mentally ill count as “mentally ill”. So, no. She wasn’t wrong. While we’re at it, there isn’t a clear-cut definition of “dangerously”, so stop pretending like there’s a medical justification for confining innocent people at their detriment.

January 13, 2016

Nevuela

Jenny didn’t lie about shit, and you know it. Quit trying to derail the debate with YOUR lies. Admit you are the one in the wrong here. Why the fuck are you on this blog in the first place? Trolls need to get a life.

I don’t understand how the statement “my child is more important than your gun” can be considered an aggressive statement and a threat, but the response of “my gun is more important than your child” is not an aggressive statement or threat. If expressing your personal values is actually stating your intent to come into a person’s property and deprive them of their possessions, why isn’t the reverse statement taken to be a threat to come into your property and deprive you of your children?

If you can perceive a threat in someone’s statement of love for their child, which in no part indicates any intention to deprive you of anything, then you shouldn’t own a lethal weapon. You aren’t capable of assessing a situation properly and deciding the appropriate response, you are not capable of being the ‘good guy with the gun’.

My family have owned guns, I’m not personally keen on them but my father owned guys, my grandfather was a gun collector. My grandfather would have harsh words for anyone stupid enough to react to shadows, seeing threats where none existed. he was very strict about who could handle his guns, because idiots and guns don’t mix.

I’m Tasmanian, that’s the state where the Port Arthur massacre occurred, here in Australia. Our gun control laws were the only thing I consider Prime Minister Howard to have done that was worth while. We still have guns here. My grandfather still had his guns, people still go out hunting. I work with at least two people who go shooting on their weekends. The notion that it is free for all or nothing with gun control is another example of people who should not have guns. They don’t have a sense of perspective and a capacity for sense that makes them responsible enough to have guns. Because that’s what a gun is a serious responsibility.

Lastly, anyone who doesn’t get upset about the murder of others is lacking as a human being and most definitely should not have a gun. A person who is happy to see the wholesale slaughter of children should never ever hold a lethal weapon.

Because these people are so twitchy and unstable that they think everything is a threat. That’s why they’re exactly the kinds of people who shouldn’t be allowed near guns. Thinking you deserve a gun to protect yourself against threats when you’re the kind of narcissist who sees any alternative opinion to yours as a threat makes you the kind of person who stands as a warning against gun ownership, not someone who should be defending it.

You make the mistake that a lot of anti-gun (or people who don’t care about guns either way) make. It’s not about the GUN. It’s about what the gun represents and the reason we insist on keeping and bearing them. Children are important. Arguably the MOST important part of us. I carry a gun (and a fire extinguisher, wear a seatbelt, buy life insurance, try to eat right, etc.) because it is my duty to get back home to my two precious little ones and my wife. I also keep guns because one day I might need to come to the defense of my country again so that we can protect what we have worked so hard to build (and that some are so desperately trying to tear down as we type).

Another mistake that is often made, this time by gun owners, is that anti-gun people hate guns. Again, it’s not about the GUN. No, they don’t hate guns; they hate gun OWNERS. They hate what you are and represent; independent, proud, & resourceful.

So, Ms. Trout, yes, your child is very important. If you don’t want to be a gun owner, then don’t buy one but please don’t assume that any of the rest of us feel the same way.

Being aggressive, trigger-happy, and paranoid while in possession of a weapon is not fine.

The majority of people who most vocally represent gun-owners, the public face of gun ownership, is overwhelmingly assholes who want any excuse to open fire on human beings. See the Twitter users above.

Responsible gun owners acknowledge the need for, and insist upon, tighter regulations, and a culture of respect, not just for gun safety, but for human life.

And it IS about the gun, at the end of the day, because if people wanted to protect their families, they wouldn’t keep firearms within the reach of their children.
It’s about the gun for us, too. You can’t legislate against sociopathic personalities, but you can legislate to reduce their access to AK-47s.

The NRA is not pro-gun-owner, it’s just pro-arms-manufacturer. What the average pro-gun person gets wrong is that all anti-gun legislation aims to remove everyone’s guns from them. We just want sensible fucking laws about what guns are for.
It would make sense if each individual were limited to one or two hunting rifles, that ought to be stored safely and limited to clearly defined areas… you could still get it out of its box in a home invasion, but what the fuck does someone need an AR-15 for? It certainly ain’t for duck huntin’.

“but what the fuck does someone need an AR-15 for? It certainly ain’t for duck huntin’.”

Shooting people. Whatever have you the impression that “duck huntin'” was the only lawful purpose for owning a firearm? My AR is currently set up for use in a home defense role. It’s for shooting any people who try to break in.

Yes. It does bother me that anyone can so glibly, and openly state an intention to kill another human being.

It bothers me that you have pre-meditated that you will kill another person – not injure, or threaten, but kill… in some hypothetical situation that you have nonetheless bought and maintained a powerful firearm to prepare for. Not a rifle or handgun, which could legitimately be used for sport but an AR-15 that you solely intend to use for murder.

It bothers me that you do not draw a distinction between people who dislike gun culture and “enemies”.

Describe to me the scenario in which you defend your home – I really want to know how you imagine this playing out.

What an amazingly bizarre world you must inhabit. I own a self loading rifle that shoots a low powered varmint cartridge (a .223 Remington). It is less powerful than my deer hunting rifle, which is chambered in .243 Winchester. Which is less powerful than my father’s deer rifle which is chambered in 30.06 Springfield, the most common deer rifle cartridge in America up until recently. Yet to you, it’s a “powerful firearm” that I can’t “legitimately” use for “sport.”

In your mind, should I use this firearm to stop a person who breaks into my home, which is a very serious felony in America, I am somehow committing “pre-meditated murder.” Which is completely silly as in almost every jurisdiction in America, when someone breaks into your occupied residence, you are presumed to be in reasonable fear for your life and are authorized to use deadly force to defend your life or the lives of others inside the home if you feel it is necessary to do so.

Yet you feel that by planning ahead, by having proper weaponry near to hand in order to be prepared in the unlikely event that someone should be foolish enough to attempt to break into my home while my wife or I are present, I am “pre-meditating” a “murder.” You need to seriously reevaluate your legal and moral definitions. One cannot “murder” someone when one has legal and moral justification for employing deadly force against that person. It is only murder when one has no legal or moral justification for using that deadly force.

I cannot believe that you are so stupid that you cannot see this elementary distinction, both in law and in morality. I also cannot believe that you are so stupid that you would believe that I should, in the event of a home invasion, offer the attacking criminal tea, cakes, and free opportunity to ravage my wife while I beg him not to harm me instead of offering him the business end of whatever weapons I have pre-positioned for this unfortunate eventuality.

January 7, 2016

AltoFronto

Can’t reply to your comment below, but had to take the time, since you bothered to half-answer my question – You didn’t really give me the detailed scenario I assumed you had planned, in order to be totally prepared for the eventuality.

“What an amazingly bizarre world you must inhabit.”

Yes. It’s called England.
I’m not an idiot – Your entire worldview is completely foreign to me and my fellow countrymen, and there is no way for you to make this seem less alien, or more rational to me.

I lived in a neighbourhood where we had a brief period of a gang pushing their way into shared houses and robbing them at the point of a machete. Yet still there would be no way I would ever think gun ownership to be a practical preventative measure against that scenario. Sturdy door locks and vigilance, maybe.
Even a person with weapons training would find it difficult to act safely and calmly in an emergency, and if you ask me, bringing a gun to a confrontation increases the danger. People act unpredictably when a gun is pointed at them.

It may not be legally considered murder for *you* to shoot an intruder, but here, unless I could prove that I had no alternative, it would be. We call that “reasonable force”. (I think they changed the law about this fairly recently, and I cba looking this up, but your best-case-scenario is always to avoid harming anyone in the confrontation – for your safety and to avoid legal repercussions).
It’s simply not justifiable in a court of law to kill someone if you had the option to a) make them flee, b) incapacitate them.

Morality is something else. You and I may differ on what we call reasonable grounds, but speaking personally, above all, Thou Shalt Not Kill.

You don’t wish to have a religious discussion with me, Alto. Nor do you wish to discuss “England” with me either. My mother was born in Scotland and was raised in Luton. She moved to the United States in the early 1960’s. She carries a gun. She personally owns a Glock 19. So don’t give me the “Well we British don’t understand guns.” Baloney. Once you get away from your propaganda, you learn pretty quickly.

Anyone who made the argument that it was disproportionate to use a firearm against a machete wielding gang would be laughed out of court. There are only two classes of “force.” Deadly Force and Non-Deadly Force. If you are faced with force likely to cause death or serious bodily injury, you may legally use force that may cause death or serious bodily injury to defend yourself. You are not required to retreat from your own house just about every jurisdiction in the US so long as the the person invading the house doesn’t also live there.

The Catholic Church has a very complete answer to your silly misrepresentation of the Fifth Commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill”

I think I’ll take the Catholic Church’s take on the Fifth Commandment over yours.

2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. “The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not.”

2264 Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow:

If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. . . . Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s.

2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.

January 7, 2016

AltoFronto

Scotland is not England. They have their own parliament, but it’s still illegal to keep any offensive weapon solely for the purpose of killing another human. It’s not part of our culture – your mother is Americanised.
I know people with guns – one’s a game keeper, the other owns a shooting range. The concept of keeping a gun for “self defense” is not a common one.

You can kill someone, if they are directly attacking you – but you can’t sneak up on someone and take the first shot.

What I wanted to know in your scenario is – well every thing.

What alerts you to the presence of intruders? Can you be certain that it’s not just one of your family, getting a snack? Do you go and investigate, or do you stay where you are? Is your AR-15 next to the bed, or somewhere else? Are there rooms between you and them? Are they already at your bedroom door? Do they look like you? Do you try to escape, or do you confront them? What are they there for? Is it to take your TV, or do they specifically intend to kill you? When you go towards them, do they see you first? Are they armed? What weapons do they have? Do they react with fear and try to flee, or do they act with aggression and attack? Do you shoot to wound or kill? Where are your family during this attack? At what point do you call the cops?
What is your state of mind? Are you calm? Do you feel your blood freeze? Do you relish the thought of killing someone? Can you be certain that you will react in exactly the right way, and that every action you take will be the correct one?
What if they shoot you or a family member first? How do you cope in the aftermath, with blood on the floor?

So far, all I can infer is that you imagine someone has entered your home, and that has been enough for you to kill them. And that you do not entertain the possibility that it could end badly.

I’m not a Catholic – but I do believe that it’s wrong to kill, if you can possibly help it.

January 8, 2016

Steven Seagal

“you can legislate to reduce their access to AK-47s”

AK-47s are machine guns, which have been unable to be registered since 1986. The price of a real AK-47 or M16 is over $20K and requires a lot of butt pillaging from the ATF (see: Form 4 requirements) to even be able to buy one. In short, nobody is buying AK-47s.

“The NRA is not pro-gun-owner, it’s just pro-arms-manufacturer.”

The NRA is primarily supported by individual donors (like me, hi there), not by firearm manufacturers.

“It would make sense if each individual were limited to one or two hunting rifles, that ought to be stored safely and limited to clearly defined areas… you could still get it out of its box in a home invasion, but what the fuck does someone need an AR-15 for? It certainly ain’t for duck huntin’.”

The Second Amendment has absolutely nothing to do with hunting (we call people who think that Fudds). It’s about killing people. Specifically, tyrannical government people.

Ready to fight for your fellow citizens, yes; most of the founders did not like the thought of a standing army. Ready to fight “for your government?” No, that doesn’t make any sense. They had just fought off their own government (they were British subjects); why would they write a law compelling people to fight for their oppressive governments (at that time, the British)?

“with muskets”

They also wrote the Constitution on parchment paper with quill pens. Should the First Amendment also not apply to me because I’m sharing my thoughts with you by bumping electrons around in copper and fiber-optic tubes? I promise you the founders didn’t anticipate that.

More importantly, the arms of that era were a lot more complicated than muskets – the early progenitor of the modern sporting rifle, nicknamed the “Kentucky rifle” was popular; an early machine gun, the “Puckle gun” had been invented decades ago, the first man-portable repeating rifle (the Girardoni air rifle) was around, as was the Belton flintlock which was a repeating flintlock handgun which was actually presented directly to the Continental Congress during the war for their consideration. The founders had seen a lot of firearm innovation in their time and to think they didn’t augur further advancement is preposterous.

January 7, 2016

Lindsay

Yes, this is just so obvious. They didn’t want a standing army in peace time, and the constitution gives Congress the power to call forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions. SUPPRESS insurrections. Anyway, militias aren’t really effective against standing armies so it’s unrealistic to think that would work now even if it was their intention.

January 7, 2016

Steven Seagal

@Lindsay What do you mean by “militias aren’t really effective against standing armies?”

Militias are what won our war of independence against the British military. Randos with small arms are what repelled our own military in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan in the face of overwhelming technological superiority.

A militia would be more than capable of repelling a standing army invasion and occupation of the USA. Can it fully replace our armed forces, particularly our fighter jets, nuclear submarines, battleships, etc.? Of course not. Could it lead to a drastic, drastic reduction in infantry forces (which has been used as a cudgel by our gov’t to the tune of $4 trillion in wars of aggression in just the last 15 years)? Yes, I think it can.

January 7, 2016

Lindsay

We wouldn’t have won the revolutionary war without the aid of the French military though. And if America actually fully committed to a war, ever, I don’t think a group of people with pistols and no military training could really take them on. Look at these countries you’re listing. They have militias but they’re not free states. Do we want to be like them? Militias often work to overthrow weak democratic governments, or they support authoritarian takeovers, or they get crushed by the military. The best defense against tyranny is a strong, stable democratic government.

January 8, 2016

Ange

” I also keep guns because one day I might need to come to the defense of my country again so that we can protect what we have worked so hard to build (and that some are so desperately trying to tear down as we type).”

If they’re trying right now obviously you and your guns (and the millions like you) aren’t making a lick of difference are you? It seems that the proper government forces are dealing the with problem without one iota of input from you.

I seem to recall Jenny mentioning that she owns or at least shoots guns? In one post, she says she’s a fan of guns. But smart people realize guns are dangerous, and while I’m sure it’s boring to listen to gun safety topics, it’s important and we need to keep talking about it.

The fact is your child is irrelevant in the gun discussion. If you think inanimate objects pose a bigger threat to your children, than criminals. Or if you won’t defend your kids and think giving armed criminals more choice lowers your risk of attack more. I understand your position, but I reject your hypothesis. Your unwillingness to protect your kids, does not superceed my right to protect mine.

Think of it this way… If you had a gun, would you allow 3 escaped fellons rape and beat your children to death or would you shoot them?

If you would shoot them, we agree. And I question why you would take the gun from someone else.

My child is more important than another person’s life, if they place my child in that if death or great bodily injury. I feel the same about your child and would never stop you from defending your children. The same reasons anti-gun people fear guns are the same reason they are such a good defensive tools. Without an ability to defend yourself you are trusting your safety to the charity of those stronger than you.

It’s more likely that your child will injure themselves with guns in the home than that you would ever save them with a gun. The AAP recommends removing guns from your home as the safest course of action. Not that I think you should be required to, necessarily, but acting like your arsenal is protecting your kids is just inaccurate.

This is not about people who are anti-gun. This is about tighter gun laws, with background checks and licenses that would need checking and renewing.

This is to make sure that someone who shouldn’t own a gun, such as these rapist criminals you are trying to scare your children with, don’t have access to a gun and therefore cannot use it to perpetrate a crime upon anyone else.

If you still think this is anti-gun, I have no hope for your comprehension skills. That you believe in guns as defensive weapons is not a notion anyone is trying to disabuse you of; your guns would still be accessible to you if you are indeed a responsible and law-abiding citizen. If that is the case, you would have nothing to fear in regards to your gun rights.

The laws that need to change are not about you, they are about the people who take advantage of the system in order to commit crimes and atrocities that you yourself would never condone.

So why would you condone their gun ownership, which could potentially fatally affect your children, when a background check and stricter licensing law would prevent that from happening?

Rape, murder, straw purchases, theft, felon gun ownship are all illegal… Are you going to make the more illegaler?

Nothing that has ever been proposed addresses that. Unless you inact precrime it can’t because there can always be a first time or an illegal transfer, or a theft (a local cop car just got stolen by a drunk, betcha there was an AR in the trunk.)

There has always been crime. Cane killed Able with a rock. There will always be crime. Criminals don’t follow laws, that is what makes them criminals.

I have a CCW permit, so does my wife (a doctor), so does my father (former minister and retired cop), and my sister and her husband. Most of us have professional gun training. All of us have had FBI background checks.

We are the ones that will be disarmed by new laws… Not criminals that are already breaking the law.

Not to mention the precedent the constitutional attack makes when a government is in power you don’t like.

You are likely a well ajusted, caring, law abiding citizen, that can’t imagine attacking someone or how you would feel if you shot someone. That is awesome and your parents are to be commended. Im sure you are a marvelous neighbor.

Not everyone is like you. Some have delt with dangerous people. Some are alive because of firearms. And some know that you can be well adjusted because other were and are willing to confront evil on your behalf.

If you are ever it true danger because of another human the first person to respond will be armed.

“This is not about people who are anti-gun. This is about tighter gun laws, with background checks and licenses that would need checking and renewing.”

Which would increase the time and the money making it more expensive and more difficult for poor people and people of color to attain firearms for self-defense. Why are you such a racist? Why are you such a classist? You are pursuing policies which deliberately disarm the poorest, who are disproportionately people of color, especially single women of color, many of whom are single moms. Like the one who approached me asking how to get a Concealed Handgun Permit.

The KKK would approve of your actions wholeheartedly. Shame on you.

January 7, 2016

JennyTrout

I was going to just give you the form response, but I’d rather address the fact that a lot of you white men with guns want to talk about people’s kids getting raped a lot. You maybe might want to have that checked out by a doctor.

Jenny it is used because it is a horrific crime that will always illicit a strong emotional response, crimes against property will not. And you didn’t answer the question.

I’m assuming you live in a nice neighborhood, fairly free from crime (like me). But not everyone has that luxury and still others bad things find them.

You’re willing to trade their ability to protect themselves to reduce the chance your kids are irresponsible with guns. I think that is very selfish. I teach mine gun safety and how they operate. You worry about them being slaughtered while they hide at school, I send mine to school where teachers are taught to shoot and carry guns.

You want the state to have a monopoly on violence, I want to be an active participant in the safety of my kids. And yours if they are in danger.

I live in a small rural county with a high poverty rate to match the high instances of meth busts. I have a shotgun for hunting and for if, god forbid, we have another outbreak of sick raccoons. My children have both been taught to use guns, and everybody I know in the area has a gun. My grandma has a .306 propped on the headboard of her bed. She hangs her rosaries on it. Nobody I know has ever accidentally shot themselves, their children, or anybody else on accident. And because I can look outside my own experiences in life and I can think critically, I have decided there are too goddamn many guns in this country, and that the gun laws we have now are too lax to do any good. You’re never going to convince me otherwise, no matter how graphic your fantasies of my children being raped might be. I’m not going to argue with you further, as I assume you have lots of violent fantasies you need to go jack off to.

Jenny, I have made no statements judging you other than implying you might be better off than your county average yet you keep calling me names and making hateful comments. You also now claim you are both a gun owner and everyone you know is, that you know of no one that has ever been injured by them, but somehow they are a threat to your children. It seems I might have touched a nerve and proven my point.

To answer your question… Yes your kids are more important to me than my gun… I have others. Why aren’t mine as important to you?

January 7, 2016

JennyTrout

Ron, considering you’re here, in the internet equivalent to my house (since I pay the rent and do all the upkeep) I get to say whatever I want to you, and I don’t have to be civil. This isn’t public property. You’re a guest here. If you don’t like it, you can leave.

And no, you haven’t touched any nerves, other than the one I have that is constantly irritated whenever men with smug attitudes start talking about guns and rape and how heroic they plan to be in some hypothetical future situation in which guns and rape are involved.

Now, from this point, I’m going to either ignore you, or, if the mood strikes me, dole out some pretty devastating verbal abuse (you can check with my regular commenters to confirm this). You can either walk your bow-legged John Wayne walk out of here and congratulate yourself on subduing another liberal with you impeccable man logic, or you can hang around and listen to me to talk about how you look like a sunburned penis with a little pair of glasses on it. It’s your call at this point.

But to be clear: I’m not insulting you because I have no way of refuting your points. I’m insulting you because you deserve to be insulted, and because I know it’s going to keep on bothering you for the rest of the day. Feel free to prove me wrong by no longer responding to comments on my blog. It’s the only way I’ll believe you.

January 7, 2016

AltoFronto

You live in a nice, safe neighbourhood, and yet you still think a home invasion is a likely scenario. To the point that you have weapons in your house.

You think murder-rapists are common, yet you trust everyone in your community to own and use a gun responsibly and effectively?

It’s the only time they are concerned about rape. When it’s not about guns, they’re the kind of abusers who claim any woman who says she was raped is lying, and just looking to destroy an innocent man’s life.

We have fostered a national cult of sociopathic anarchy… The pro-gun right is as much a terrorist organization as Al-Qaeda or Daesh. They hold us hostage by subtly endorsing the assassinations of elected leaders.

Funny you should say that, since my family have been saying that about your NRA for years.

I love that we have such strict laws about gun control in Australia, because it means that tragedies like Port Arthur and Curtis Cheng are few and far between, and the weapons are obtained illegally, so those criminal links can be followed and prosecuted.

I’ve always wanted to ask a USA citizen why the response to the Sandy Hook shooting wasn’t gun control but bullet proof backpacks. Someone with a gun can still grab a kid and shoot them in the head, even when the backpack they are wearing is meant to stop those bullets. Because it’s not likely that kids will wear them on their heads, right?

There is no defense against what you don’t see coming, so I find the statements about ‘protecting’ people with guns one of the most ridiculous statements a civilian gun owner can make on the topic of gun control. (This does not include the police, or national defense forces, where those individuals are trained in handling weapons and the situations in which it is appropriate to use them; it would also include veterans but with PTSD issues aside… much too big a topic to cover in this or later comments) Unless everyone in the USA starts carrying concealed weapons, in which case it’s only going to lead to ‘who has the bigger stick, or the fastest draw’.

It seems to me, Obama is finally saying ‘enough is enough, let’s fight these fires with water’ and the NRA members are all throwing sticks and logs in and saying ‘Nonsense! The only way to make a fire go out is to give it more wood!’

Jenny, you are an extremely courageous person to continually put yourself out there. I admire that very much. I wish you good luck in everything, but especially in getting your voice and this message heard. Let us all hope that reason and logic prevail in the changing of the laws, and that no one who goes to preschool, school, university, church, the shopping centre (I believe you use ‘mall’ in the US?), cinema, or gets on an aeroplane ever need fear that this time is when they are shot down by a legally obtained gun.

You’re surprised at the barrage of whack-job comments after 24 hours? On October 2, 2014, I clicked on a link to a story on Controversial Times site titled “12 Times Good Guys With Guns Stopped Mass Shootings” … Which listed the dozen times SINCE 1997 (!) these unicorns were sighted. “Woo hoo, 12 times…” I began, then cited the recent WaPo article about the 240+ mass shootings in the past 10 months. After a couple replies which were somewhat derisive (you know what I really mean), I simply added the link to the cited article.

This was started through FB, just as I discovered your blog, so I’ve been notified everytime a reply was posted. I didn’t bother to read them after a couple times because assholes? Before the San Bernadino tragedy I counted more than a 100 replies and maybe a couple dozen likes. Since SB, the number shot up (see what I did there lol) to approach 200. And a fair proportion of likes among them, too. And 2-1/2 months after the original post they keep coming.

Here’s the thing I find so appalling about these folks. They are so obsessed with the concept of safety and protecting their own family (talking to you, Greg) that they cannot acknowledge the 30+ kids who died last year, killed by another kid who found a gun just layin around or in other accidental shootings, by suggesting that, yes, we could do more to require gun-owners are capable of proper gun safety. Nor can they argue that a very large percentage of 2/3 of the 33,000 deaths last year from suicides might have been prevented if no gun had been present; serves them right, I guess, but those left to grieve are victims too.

No. The knee-jerk (emphasis on “jerk”) response is to defend their constitutional right, frequently with profanity, and argue not on fact or solutions but on their absolute right to insult, defame and denigrate you.

I’m guessing there are responsible gun owners out there who don’t rush to their keyboards to post awful things, then head to the local gun store to buy even more guns and ammo. Where are they? I keep hearing about these folks who are actually in the majority of gun owning members of the NRA, but if it’s true, they are the paradigm of The Silent Majority.

I own a gun but I hate the NRA. I’m actually thinking about getting rid of it now that I have a kid. And honestly, I kind of gave up on gun control after Sandy Hook so I don’t really bring it up anymore.

Wow. This is such a hot topic, I applaud you for even being willing to wade into the fray. I believe the problem is far more fundamental than who owns a gun and who doesn’t. The problem with our entire society at this point is complete and total lack of respect for human life. Yes, we own guns. Yes, we hunt for food to supplement what we buy at the grocery store. No, we are not anarchists. No, we are not survivalists. We are LAW-ABIDING citizens who practice fanatic home safety with our guns. Yes, we have grandchildren, and NO the guns are not EVER within a child’s site. All guns and ammo are securely locked up unless someone is out in the woods hunting or taking target practice.
The problem with guns is not guns. It is the attitudes and actions of the people who own them.
The problems caused by gun violence in the US lie with people who obtain guns illegally in most cases. Yes, there have been exceptions to this. I’m not stupid.
The problem with our government wanting to legislate away our rights to own guns of any kind is that we – law abiding hunters who happen to be citizens of the USA – are not the problem.
The root cause of violence in the US is, in my opinion, greed, hatred, lack or morals of any kind, and a sense of entitlement that goes far beyond “the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.”
Yes, Jenny, your child is more important than my guns.
Every human life is more important than my guns.
But in my case, my family, our budget, and the environment benefit from the ownership and responsible use and storage of legally obtained, registered firearms.
There has to be a balance between “rights” and “responsibilities.”
It is my opinion, also, that people are far more interested in what they perceive as their rights than they are in what their responsibilities to their fellow human beings are.
God bless you, Jenny, and keep your family safe from all forms of violence this year and every year. I pray that the people who felt the need to lash out at you for expressing how very much you value the lives of your children and Mr. Jen manage to see how much their closed-minded ignorance is contributing the problems in our nation.

Yeah, I think what people aren’t getting is that the people who approached me are the ones who are paranoid sociopaths, not just people who have guns in general. I scrolled back through my twitter TL to see, and found that on the day I tweeted that sentence, nobody asked me if I’ve ever owned or used a gun. We’ve got a gun, for hunting (if I ever manage to not have a deadline directly during firearm deer season) and we’ve taken it with us when we’ve been camping in the U.P., because shit happens with wildlife. But the assumption is made that if you want tougher gun laws, you must be 100% anti-gun, and 100% pro-state violence toward American citizens. They’re so eager to describe to me all the ways my family is going to get murdered, just because one simple sentence angered them, that they never stopped to actually ask me what my position on guns/gun control was.

I was with you as a reasonable person with reasonable-sounding gun ownership opinions until you said “the problem with our government wanting to legislate away our rights to own guns of any kind…” What?? Which member of the federal legislative branch is writing that bill?

Ummm…about three dozen Democrats have proposed such a bill in the House which would ban those scary “assault weapons” which are defined as any weapon with a pistol grip, a detachable magazine holding more than 7 rounds, a flash-hider or muzzle brake, or the dreaded barrel shroud. It forbids the import, manufacture, or sale of such weapons and upon your death you cannot transfer your weapons to your heirs. So it’s a gradual ban over a generation. Look it up. Of course, it’s dead as a fish, but it’s been proposed.

I’m not sure why anyone would need more than seven rounds. In the unlikely event that eight people are sieging your home at the same time, you’re probably already screwed. If it’s a matter of rising up and defeating the government, surely 7 x [however many guns are in America right now] = revolution.

It’s not a one bullet, one person proposition. In a defense situation, even a trained shooter tends to miss because of the intensity of the situation. Remember all those times people go crazy when police shoot 50 or more rounds in a shootout with one or 2 suspects. It’s because in a tense situation, they miss, a lot in many cases. Also, when you do hit your target in a life or death situation, you keep shooting your target until they are incapacitated. Just because a person is shot, it is not always immediately fatal. In that few minutes it takes them to bleed out in a situation where their wound was not immediately fatal, they could kill the person defending themselves. That is why you need more than 7 rounds in a defense weapon.

January 8, 2016

JennyTrout

So your argument there is that since police officers–who have mandatory firearm training and who practice their accuracy skills–often fire many rounds at few targets and very often miss, untrained civilians should be allowed to fire as many rounds as they want as well, because it will somehow be more effective when they do it?

If you think that police officers “practice” their shooting skills, then you are even more ignorant than I thought. The average street cop shoots for score once or twice a year depending on state requirements, on a test course a trained monkey could pass. I shoot more in a month than 80% of cops do in a year. Cops carry guns. They don’t actually have any special skills with them. If they show up at IDPA or USPSA competitions they generally get humiliated by fat old guys who actually practice.

January 8, 2016

JennyTrout

Yes, Sean, we’re all aware that you’re an action hero. Your penis is the largest, your legend will live forever. You have made that abundantly clear from your numerous, fanatical comments about how smart, brave, and strong you are. But I’m bored of listening to that now.

January 8, 2016

candy apple

I was raised on a cattle ranch in Arizona. We had guns on the ranch, because we needed them to survive. This isn’t hyperbole; as a child, I was almost struck by a rattlesnake that my dad shot to protect me. The cattle were also under threat of attack by bobcats, and as they were our livelihood, we had to protect them as well.

The majority of people advocating for their “right to bear arms” appear to be delusional to me. On our ranch, a gun was a tool. These people have fetishized their guns into some kind of extension of their very being. It’s bizarre, to me, a ranch girl who grew up with guns kept at hand for any danger.

I lived in England for three years. Guns are against the law there, unless you live on a farm or are participating in a fox hunt or something. Counter-intuitively, I actually felt FAR safer in a country where even the majority of the police do not carry weapons. Returning to America frightened me. I’m frightened now. I think that Fox News and the hysterical Right Wing have been drumming up hysteria for eight straight years and this geyser they’ve cultivated is going to blow up, hard. These people are nuts and they are heavily armed. I’m thinking about leaving this country again, this time, for good.

I saw this cartoon today; it’s being passed around Facebook to loud agreement: https://i.imgur.com/V0VHf1N.png This is the delusional world these people live in. It bears no resemblance to reality. I feel like something bad is coming and don’t want to be here when it happens.

The response “my gun has nothing to do with your child” is acceptable, I think. It is a statement of values. I could say something critical in response, along the lines of :

“… my child will grow up and be a doctor who will save your life, or a teacher, and teach your grandchildren, or a scientist and save you from starvation/poverty. My child will also pay taxes that will help support you, directly and indirectly in your old age. Even though you have not met, my child is important to you.
I don’t think it is possible to make sure that my child has nothing to do with you. In five words, my child is your future. Now we reach a point at which we disagree – is your gun also your future?”

And the argument turns into “no man is an island” routine. Not appealing to me personally, but acceptable. It is possible to believe in essential isolation and independence and not harm others with this belief.

Jeesus, when will this end? I do agree with the second amendment and am a Christian but these people are giving people like me a bad name. It’s a scary world we live in when people value a possession over human life. The President has a tough job and yes, something needs to be done about the gun violence. He has not said he is taking guns away from the public, get an F-ing clue people! What is he going to do, knock on everyones front door and search your house and take away your firearms? God forbid we have another tragedy like Sandy Hook for someone to step up and make a change. I’m glad something is getting accomplished and so sick of these conservatives who call themselves “Christian” making it out that the President doesn’t care. Ever think that maybe the reason he is making changes is because he DOES care? Ugh, so fed up with the us vs. them mentality in America today.

Jenny’s statement was a false one and everyone knows it. She’s a troll. Of course a human life is more important than a THING. But that’s not her point. She’s slyly implying that her irrational fear of guns is more important that my natural rights. When faced with reasonable arguments to this effect she falls back on insults and parroting her original lie. It’s a false statement from the get go, intended to generate a response so she’d have material to ridicule gun owners. Of course, it worked, and here we are.

Er, owning a gun is not a ‘natural’ right, you ninny. If it were, all peoples of all countries of the world would own guns, and the right to own a gun would be mentioned in the United Nations human rights charter. I’m absolutely certain it isn’t, because I have read the charter through several times.

Let me reiterate: nowhere in the declaration of human rights, as set out by the United Nations, does it say that one of those rights is gun ownership.

This ‘natural right’ you feel you have is purely a cultural construct. And your culture gives you the support of the law in regards to gun ownership. Good for you. All the government wants to do is tighten it up a little more, so that tragedies like Sandy Hook are less likely to happen.

After all, nobody wants that to happen again, do they? That’s what your president is trying to prevent. Join the conversation, help out by making suggestions that will reduce gun violence, rather than just telling everyone at the top of your voice that you have a right to own guns.

The entire point of my “trolling” was to bring you people out. And it worked. I’m not responsible for your actions. If you knew it was trolling, then why did you buy into it? I didn’t make any of these people respond, then dissolve into temper tantrums. When they received the same response over and over, they could have stopped at any time.

And I didn’t ridicule gun owners. I exposed the disgusting power fantasies of SOME gun owners, and their bone-deep need to try to intimidate anyone who doesn’t disagree with them. And those people ridiculed themselves.

Jenny,
Although it’s inarguable (by sane individuals) that your child’s life is more important than a gun, the intent of your comment was clear; an inflammatory statement aimed directly at gun owners (ie; “your” gun). You intentionally phrased it in such a way as to instigate anger from those that believe the right to bear arms is an important part of the US constitution. The constitutional amendment giving the right to bear arms was instituted to protect the “bottom-up” governments in the USA (originally how the states were created) from the “top-down” oligarchies that had attempted to impose their will. Many sane individuals were involved in drafting and approving this constitutional amendment, and I’m sure that thoughts of their own children’s lives were paramount in their decision making. I disagree that America needs to be disarmed. I believe that would be a band-aid fix and would lead to much bloodshed and civil unrest. I believe we need to start looking at the root of the problem. Taking tools away is not the answer.

Again. Gun violence isn’t nearly the issue anywhere else that it is in the states. Gee. I wonder why. Maybe America doesn’t need to be disarmed, but it does need to grow the fuck up/be more regulated. Too much of that gun violence is the result of ignorance, stupidity and sheer self centeredness.

Your culture doesn’t allow for the responsible ownership of guns. It’s a childish culture, and the result is children playing with dangerous tools.

You really don’t have any idea about murder rates in countries outside of the US and Western (non Slavic) Europe, do you? You should get out more. You should also investigate how statistics are kept in the US vs in places like England. Did you know that in the US, a homicide is counted in the year of death while in England it is not counted unless someone is convicted? This leads to a dramatic undercount in their homicide rates. Not enough to account for their lower rates of homicide than ours, of course, but then they had a lower rate of homicides than we did even when they had no gun laws at all. One must presume that other factors are at work than simply a different number of guns in circulation.

And click on the triangle/carat to reorder the list by “Rate” and see the intentional homicide rate by country. You will see that the US has a rather modest intentional homicide rate. Not as low as the UK, but then we have never had one as low as the UK. And we’ve cut ours in half in the last 20 years or so, which is quite a good thing, I’d say.

Quite a good thing, wouldn’t you say? Our experiences with other crimes, both violent and property(non-violent) are about the same. They are down by about half since their peaks in the mid 1990’s. No one is quite sure why. Of course we’d like to claim that more guns led to less crime, but we can’t honestly do that. We can only say that there are more guns and there have been less crime. But correlation does not imply causation, as you are no doubt well aware.

My name is Alex. I consider myself to be more liberal than conservative. I am a gun owner. I won’t hate on you for your comment or opinion. Personally I would prefer a world without guns. While I agree with the sentiment “my child is more important than your gun” I can step back and make a rational argument.

Guns exist. They will always exist. Governments will always arm their military with guns. Criminals will always have a black market to get guns. This country would not exist nor would democracy around the globe exist if private citizens did not acquire guns to defeat their prior totalitarian and often tyrannical governments.

The foresight of our founders considered the possibility of the government being used to oppress or extort its citizens and saw fit to give us the option to remain armed to resist such oppression in the future.

If I were to ask you, “Do you completely trust your politicians?” how would you answer? “Do you feel that if Law enforcement were the only citizens that could get guns legally, do you fully trust that they would keep you completely safe from someone who obtained a gun illegally?”

It makes me sad when people get overly emotional over some words someone posts like a lot of the jerks that replied with hate. I’d say that they are the fringe that are sooo emotional right now they are not rational and should take a step back and realize how emotional a mother who has lost a child to a gun would be.

Ultimately, I would wish people to stop focusing on the Gun Debate and focus more on “what is making people go crazy and murder people”. Disgust and frustration. A system that is rigged to ensure the rich stay in power, a media that toys with people’s prejudices to inflame and distract us from the actual problems we face as a society, and complete breakdown of our moral fiber as a nation.

I have to note, we HAD a world without guns, for centuries. It was pretty much ruled by the strong, with rules like “Being a peasant found with a sword, or arrows with point not suitable for small game, gets you hanged.”

Lol, your little power fantasies are adorable. You gun nuts are so removed from reality, it’s laughable. Dude, if some strongman came riding up to you, it would reduce you to such an impotent, quivering mess, you probably wouldn’t be able to lift the gun. But by all means, keep deluding yourself that you’re some sort of action hero. Clearly, your fantasy is all you have.

January 8, 2016

JennyTrout

You have more than proven my point here. Guns are not an issue of freedom or liberty for you. Guns are your identity. You will not consider yourself powerful or strong if you aren’t allowed to have a gun.

January 8, 2016

khan

And has the existence of guns really dissuaded the good people of, say, North Korea or the Third Reich from instituting “The Strongest Rule”?

January 13, 2016

Dani

It wasn’t guns or swords that controlled the weak, it was money. Money buys power. Historically it bought the church and the people behind the swords. Today, it buys politicians and their votes.

The fringe was really what I was going after, tbh. I think it shows how unlikely we are to come to any sort of reasonable gun control policies as long as this subculture is thriving. Sadly, the people most enmeshed in that way of thinking are the ones voting for politicians who favor the rich, flood Fox News with propaganda, and try to scare us with Muslims, Mexicans, and “thugs”, as other commenters have pointed out.

Claiming guns are some sort of protection for freedom against the state is so absurdly ignorant.

First, gun-humpers don’t want freedom for most people. Most of them are terrified of gay people getting married, of Muslims opening mosques, of women having reproductive autonomy, of black people living in their neighborhoods, of immigrants speaking other languages than English in public, etc. All things that are necessarily part of a truly free country by any sensible definition of the word “free.” And they use their guns as threats against any progress towards these things—threats that are carried out not infrequently.

Second, the biggest threat to freedom right now isn’t something you fight with weapons. It’s the economic policies put into action by the very politicians that the gun-humpers vote into office because those politicians promise to keep the f*gs and t*wel-heads and sluts and n*ggers and illegals under the thumb of righteous straight, white, male, Christian citizens. Politicians who are bought and paid for by industries such as the weapon manufacturers who stand to make obscene amounts of money the more irrational fears are flamed and gun regulations are crippled. You fight that threat to freedom by not being a gullible, terrified piece of shit bigot. You fight it by voting for candidates who will strengthen social services, implement progressive taxation and enforce corporate taxation, and get corporate money out of campaign finance.

Jenny, they VOTED for the people who armed the very government they’re so afraid they have to fight! They literally created their own worst nightmare — a powerful government they will have to overthrow by force. It’s the very definition of insanity!

Been a longtime reader and THIS is what draws me out of the woodwork….I’m confused Jenny. You say that you own a gun and did not say that your phrase is advocating for the removal of all guns, just the fundamental inarguable fact that a child’s life is more important than guns. But that is what the phrase implies, that you have to choose. In any case I’m undecided on gun control myself. My family hunts and shoots skeet, I’ve been in the military, and I’m a mom. I believe the vast majority of gun owners are very responsible ones who don’t need to be regulated, and at the same time I’m scared shitless of school shootings, to the point I keep my kids home on anniversaries of shootings (because so many shooters want to emulate their “heroes”). I don’t give a fuck about regulations, constitutional amendments, emotional rhetoric, and social media trollings, I want someone to think of an ACTUAL solution. Whatever bullshit it is that people post somewhere that other people agree or argue about still isn’t doing shit to help anything. Take all the guns away? Everyone knows in this country it will never happen, so that and absolutely everything else I’ve heard is just a lot of useless wishful thinking/sanctimonious back and forth and no kids being safer. Having had my say, I still don’t feel any better.

The point of the tweet was to elicit the exact response that it got; an admission from the hardcore pro-gun right that they do, in fact, believe that their guns are more important than human life. I received countless responses that *weren’t* as vehemently homicidal as the ones I posted here, but these were the people who never asked me what my position on gun control was, who just leapt immediately to, no, my child’s life is not more important than their gun, and who became more and more aggressive and abusive when I wouldn’t be their audience.

Basically, I knew it was a loaded (rimshot) statement, and it was specifically to expose the not-uncommon responses from hardcore pro-gun conservatives. While I understand what you’re saying, that you would prefer a solution, I don’t believe we can reach a solution, as long as this is the culture we’ve fostered. And that was the entire point; not to fix the problem of gun control, but to show exactly why that’s probably not going to ever be fixable.

Ugh, so many of these responses are so gross. I admire you for your courage in confronting these gun-maniacs, but I’m sorry you had to deal with such vitriolic responses, especially the threats and pedophilia (those are beyond disgusting and I hope you reported them and they were deleted right away). Fishing or not, nobody deserves those and they’re unacceptable in any kind of discourse, on or off-line. Plus I have a feeling that if a man had spoken up with the same line on Twitter, he would not get half the amount of vitriol and harassment either. We live in a hideously gun-obsessed, misogynistic, and racist culture unfortunately.

Was raised in a very pro-gun household and as a child I just literally believed that one day I’d be shot and one day I’d have to shoot someone like I just thought this was a normal and inevitable thing that happened to everyone and it turns out that it’s uh. Not. At all. Something’s wrong with a place where a kid can grow up thinking that.

No one is attempting to take away or harm your child. Your actual statement should have been: “My fears are more important than your rights” which is of course both inaccurate and an idiotic statement. No, no ones’ emotions are more important than a right that is codified in the Constitution.

Would anyone say with impunity:
My emotions are more important than every citizens’ right to free speech, religion, and press? – Never mind, based on recent events, there are some who think these very things.

My emotions are more important than the prohibition of your property being seized by the military?

My emotions are more important than every citizens’ right to be secure in your property, person, and papers from unwarranted search and seizure?

My emotions are more important than every citizens’ right to not be placed in legal double jeopardy or to be forced to testify against themselves?

My emotions are more important than every citizens’ right to a speedy trial, a jury, to know the charges brought against them, challenge witnesses of the prosecution and call witnesses for their defense?

My emotions are more important than every citizens’ right to not be tortured while in the custody of the state.

Do you see how unbelievably insane the same “logic” sounds when it is applied to just the other articles of the Bill of Rights? This should be the standard to consider before you decide an opinion on additional firearms laws (or proclamations masquerading as laws).

First of all, people say that their fear is more important than every citizens’ right to freedom of religion all the time. We have candidates in a presidential race whose entire platforms are founded on saying exactly that.

Second, the disdain for emotion that comes from the hardcore pro-gun conservatives is laughable. The entire argument for wanting to own guns that I have seen here has been, “I am afraid of [insert threat here], so I get to have a gun!” You cannot convince me that “What if someone breaks in?” isn’t a statement of fear, because it is.

You cannot detach emotion and fear from a gun control argument on either side, because emotion is the motivator on both sides.

Several of the more deluded, power-obsessed ones have come over from HuffPo, where there’s already a comment section. The point of being here specifically is so I can see their little performances. Well, that and the HuffPo comment section is largely an audience that will agree with them. They can’t perform if there’s no one to play off of.

I was raised with guns, but I never thought “Omg, I’m gonna get shot” because sense and a good education taught me better. I still shoot, taught my kids and now my grandkids how to, how not to, and how to be safe. Your kid is more important than my gun- to you. My kids is more important than my guns… HOWEVER. my gun is important. My guns have been used to save the lives of my self and my children. I’m not gonna go around shooting peoples’ kids, lol. That notion is ridiculous. Not by intent, nor by carelessness would I harm any innocent. I would, though, shoot someone trying to harm my kids. I would do the same to protect anyones’ children. My counter statement would have to be; My right to own a gun does not disappear due to anyones’ fear of such a tool. TheoVG is correct. Your statement implies that you have to choose between children and guns. I choose guns to protect children, and anyone else. Such a statement seems designed to stir up bullsh1t.

It was designed to stir up bullshit. I’ve said as much, several times. A simple statement was enough to draw this much ire and a call to civil war, without any elaboration on what I do or do not support with regards to gun rights. The assumption was, “She’s taking away our guns.”

I feel like both sides of the argument kind of do a disservice by focusing on the more sensational, unlikely crimes like school shootings or terrorist attacks or even home invasions. In my opinion these would probably be the least likely to be prevented by gun control. It’s the situations where people know each other and have an argument, or have a stupid moment and cause an accident, or have a bad depression day, that just having a gun easily available can cause damage in a split second. People are not divided into murderous sociopaths and good people who would never do anything stupid or wrong. Anyone can fuck up.

Depression would most likely be suicide (which is indeed a good proportion of US gun deaths but it’s not the only source). I really wish people would stop blaming the mentally ill. It’s an utter disgrace. Mental illness is not the problem – the virus of scaremongering, warmongering, spreading of hate, lies, bigotry are the problems.

Not saying you’re blaming the mentally ill and maybe you’re not even referring to major depression (or any other mood disorder) but I still – as someone with severe mental illness including a history of psychosis – can’t resist pointing these things out. Yes, mentally ill have taken revenge out on people but the fact is we are unfairly made a scapegoat – and there are at least two sides to every situation. I should point out the same thing happens with Islam – to the peril of everyone. You reap what you sow and it is a fulfilling prophecy: if you treat someone or something as something long enough they might very well become it.

From the 2013 numbers from FBI, there were over 8k deaths by gun (a significant portion – 5k or so- are from hand guns. The numbers from the CDC put suicide by gun for 2013 at over 21k. This is of course where the number ‘30,000’ comes from that is often quoted for gun deaths or gun violence.

While I have zero argument about that number being way to high, it is disingenuous to include suicides as ‘gun violence’. The other problem with blaming guns in the suicide numbers is that there is no way to determine if a gun had not been available whether or not the person would have still committed suicide.

I’m glad that the President is interested in investing in the mental health problems of the nation. The saddest part is that the 2013 numbers show over 40k people a year commit suicide. That is HUGE. 5x the number of people commit suicide as are murdered by guns (2013 was the last year I could find when I checked, it may be updated by now with 2014 numbers though), and 2.5x by gun as are murdered by guns.

We have a mental health problem. On top of that, many of the mass murders are done by people who in all honesty I think we all agree are definitely having mental issues. We are disconnected as a society which doesn’t help, because there’s no real way to recognize the signs when you only passingly know your neighbors. The question is, how do we address this mental health problem we have?

The problem with focusing on mental health as solution to gun-related death is that it shifts the blame for mass murders and gun violence in general onto mentally ill people. A huge perpetrator of this is the media; though Dylann Roof clearly stated that his intent was to go into a church, kill black people, and start a race war, there were still reporters hypothesizing that “mental illness” might have played a factor in the crime. There’s very much a belief in our culture that for someone to commit mass murder, they “must have been out of their minds,” because we don’t want to believe that a sane person could go out and kill someone. But if that were the case, every single murder would be eligible for an insanity defense.

When we look at gun control and mental health, we tend to see a lot of lip service given to making mental health services more accessible, with very little willingness to allocate funds toward it. Then inevitably someone suggests that mental health should part of a background check, which is invasive and, at the moment, illegal. This creates a lot of problems, because not only do we then have medical privacy rights being violated, we’re also saying we’re comfortable denying second amendment rights to a select group of people only, based on the fact that they have a medical disability. That’s why a lot of mental health advocates and mentally ill people (like myself) support the idea of a better access to mental health nationwide, but don’t want that to happen specifically as a gun control measure.

The moment you begin to glibly mock suicide and suggest ways to enable it, you are no longer allowed to be here, for the safety of my readership. You need to leave. I’ll be deleting your comments and any comments from your IP address from here out.

I was referring to suicide with the depression comment. There are statistics showing people with guns in the home are more likely to attempt suicide and to succeed in the attempt than with other methods. A life saved is a live saved, I think.

I really should stay out of this because not only do I hate politics, I especially hate American politics (I also hate Americanised things that weren’t strictly from America but that’s another matter entirely). There is so much blood (figuratively and literally) on America’s hands that it really is futile for me to get into. However, the sheer arrogance of these people are a good reason – and yes, this goes to all the Americans out there that whinge about others calling Americans arrogant – that most of the world thinks Americans are arrogant. To actually dismiss a person’s life over your silly rights to be armed, my god that is pathetically selfish. There are criminal regimes that act that way (also ‘shoot first think later’ as apparently many states authorise) and they are criticised and condemned to hell so what difference is it if it is a citizen? None because Americans are above all others, right? Well guess what people: combine the relentless bullying/xenophobia/hate in general in the US with this and you have the school shootings (for example). And you know what – I have zero sympathy for the bullies/hate mongers/et al. that are killed – they deserve it. Yes, that might seem hypocritical but if you think it does observe that a) I don’t have any violence in me and wouldn’t kill anyone (I’m only pointing out that bullies have it coming to them – and frankly those also who sympathises with them or don’t stand up for victims of bullying where they could might also deserve it) and b) my point is subtle to some (it shouldn’t be but many are incapable of picking up on subtleties).

Furthermore, Australia has never ever had the right in their constitution to own guns so the so-called forced gun buyout is a lie. You get it? A lie. Even snopes.com has this for you (but I happen to know for other reasons). Lastly, the subject of dictators supposedly outlawing guns: you’re ignorant to history, full stop. It’s amusing that your precious presidential candidate Ben Carson actually believes the Nazis wouldn’t have been able to accomplish anything if guns were legal (which, incidentally, they weren’t legal for Jews LATER but many things weren’t legal for Jews). It had nothing to do with uprisings (the support for Nazis was something far more powerful); indeed, the Nazis instigated violent uprisings (and they didn’t tighten gun laws but loosened them; the restriction came before their rise and even then Hitler Youth should say it all)! If you paid attention to history you’d understand this somewhat and if you studied Nazi Germany even a bit you’d really understand it. This is why history repeats itself; people are too stupid to learn from it. Btw… to those who think that being armed will allow you to protect others, I challenge you to look up the realities that some people have proven exactly that they were the ones that were killed themselves. It’s also funny (yes I’m laughing here) that a woman was shot by her toddler (can’t cite the source exactly but I know it was on the BBC – as was the kid that killed the Uzi instructor and other examples like that) in a shop … goes to show just how great of an idea it is.

One more interesting bit: Iceland has an impressive gun:citizen ratio but has a very low gun violence rate. Compare that to the US.

Congratulations to all the Americans that fail to see these things: it’s your own doing that most of the world think you stupid and arrogant; if you don’t like it don’t act it – or stop whining.

The fact that children, including toddlers, are often involved in accidental shootings is too common to be amusing to me. Google “GunFAIL” (if you can tolerate it), and you’ll see what I mean. I’m sure every one of those parents were responsible gun owners until that one day when they weren’t. There’s a website called The Cornered Cat, written by a woman who gives instructions in shooting, and she is adamant about gun safety. You can never lay it aside “just for a moment” or pick it up carelessly “just that one time,” and she urges her readers to give serious thought to whether or not they should be carrying at all. As someone who is very pro-gun control, I’ve made it a point to read sites like that and talk to my one or two sane friends with guns. Many, many people seem to think that carrying a gun is like a magic amulet that will keep you safe.

In any case, I have a mood disorder and should not live in a house with a gun. I suppose it would be possible to wave me aside as “one of those terrible mentally ill people who cause all the trouble,” but of course I’m not, and as John Oliver pointed out, the people who use mental illness as an excuse not to talk about guns never want to spend a dime on our mental health care.

The home front: So many people die annually from gunfire in the US that the death toll between 1968 and 2011 eclipses all wars ever fought by the country. According to research by Politifact, there were about 1.4 million firearm deaths in that period, compared with 1.2 million US deaths in every conflict from the War of Independence to Iraq.

A right good job America. You’re definitely the best at some things! Congrats!

I haven’t read any of those thoughts yet, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that about 220 of those are angry gun nuts who followed you back here. Personally I don’t have many constructive thoughts about guns because I live in Britain and was about 13 when they were banned. I’ve fired a gun exactly one time, for a clay pigeon shoot, and I just don’t get the desire to stockpile a bunch of guns I’ll likely never need to use. I mean, we have quite a few Nerf guns in the house, but we can play with those. I can’t exactly have a shooting match in the hallway with real guns!

I like this blog usually and I do feel gun control is needed in the U.S. but I feel the name calling and personal insults coming from both sides is disappointing. Isn’t it better to win an argument with sound logic and facts? Calling people names or making assumptions about their character regardless of what they have said is, to me, a poor strategy that only makes the person doing it look bad.

people say horrible stuff on social media where they feel they are anonymous. It’s the nature of the internets sadly. That said, I think her statement is silly. The safety of her child is unconnected to my firearm. It’s the firearms of criminals that are the worry.

I feel the mentality that promotes such behavior on the internet and in real life needs to change so while I understand that it is the way things are now, I refuse to accept that it cannot be changed. As for the guns of criminals and non-criminals, all guns are capable of killing both in defense and by accident, the gun in the hands of any person is a danger if used irresponsibly or affected by human error. I don’t know you or if you are responsible, but I do know some people are not (an unfortunately large number according to the statistics I have seen posted here). So I believe in gun control and I believe guns can be responsibly owned.

Oh.my.crapballs :-O This is exactly why I, as a Dutch person, NEVER get into discussions about guns with my online American friends. The whole pro gun mentality baffles me and frankly, scares the shit out of me.
Plus, it makes me incredibly sad that so many people could think that a person that gets confronted so much with the fallout of gun violence (even if he is the president and he has his emotions more in check than the average person), would be faking emotions when talking about those fallouts and wanting to make those fallouts a thing of the past.
Here in the Netherlands, not all the shootings in the US reach us in the news, but I can tell you that something like Sandy Hook is something I will remember for the rest of my life and I haven’t even seen a single pic of it. What a heartless monster one must be to imagine someone’s tears over such an awful tragedy would naturally be fake 🙁

Jenny Trout, your argument is inherently flawed.
You are falsely assuming that every, single firearm owner is an active threat to the life of your child.
In your mind, the armed criminal and the armed, law-abiding person are exactly the same.
Obviously, that is completely wrong.
You have no factual evidence to even begin to back your claims up. In fact, all you do have are your feelings and opinions.
You know what the scariest thing is though? It’s that no facts, logic or reason can change your mind.

So go ahead and ban me because you disagree with me. It’s okay, I expect it. Though we all know you’re only banning me because you can’t refute what I am saying.

I haven’t banned anyone for having a differing opinion. I’ve deleted two comments in what is an overall highly aggressive comment section, both for content that I felt could be harmful to readers who are mentally ill (suggesting alternate methods of suicide, using “mentally ill” as an insult). This is my blog and my policy has always been that every single comment gets posted, as long as it’s not spam. On very rare occasions, I’ve closed all comments, so nobody got a say, but today it was sufficient to eject two commenters. If you don’t like it, you’re free to not visit.

I had, in fact, already warned you once that the way you were speaking about mental illness wasn’t okay. You argued with that warning. I didn’t have to give you another one. I don’t have to respond to you now. I’m doing it to point out that other people have brought up mental illness today, too, and they haven’t been banned. I even answered someone’s totally reasonable comment about it. Your comment was banned because you were graphically describing suicides and your idea to make suicide more palatable to everyone. That’s sick, it’s abusive, it’s gross, and because of that you are not welcome here anymore.

Nowhere did Jenny say that “every, single firearm owner is an active threat to the life of [her] child.” Nowhere. You made that up. Nowhere did she say that “the armed criminal and the armed, law-abiding person are exactly the same.” Again, you made that up.

You’re not disagreeing with Jenny; you’re disagreeing with the straw men you built yourself. Of course you’d disagree with something you’d make to disagree with. And then you have the gall to say facts and logic won’t change Jenny’s mind. Well, they might, but how would you know that when all you’ve brought to the table is fallacies?

Why don’t you use ctrl/cmmd + f to search the thread for responses by JennyTrout (no space between the names) and see what she actually has to say.

@A. Noyd When Jenny says that “my child is more important than your gun” she is saying that every single firearm owner is a threat to her child. Otherwise she would have directed her comments to the criminals using firearms. Instead, she directed her comments to those who support firearm rights.

Facts, logic and reason will not change the gun grabbers mind. Because if they could, they would’ve by now.

I already have seen what Jenny has to say. That’s why my statement stands and why when she responded to me, she completely ignored my comments on the subject at hand and instead focused on my comments about her banning people with differing views.

No, she isn’t saying that. That’s the interpretation you chose because it’s convenient to avoiding having your own mind changed. She directed the comment to people like you to provoke responses that illustrate how broken the gun-humper culture* is. She’s said as much if you cared to look.

If simple statements of how human beings are more important than inanimate objects makes you throw reason out the window, then that’s your problem. Jenny is not trying to take your guns, nor is anyone else here, but your chosen response should certainly make any rational person reconsider the wisdom in letting you have one.

And she didn’t direct her comment at “those who support firearm rights.” She direct it at the people who equate being pro-gun with being anti-regulation to the point of threatening violence and death at the mere mention of prioritizing humans above objects. (Even if you don’t make those threats yourself, you’ve chosen to identify with the people who do.)

For all your talk of differing views, you’re really, really bad at imagining alternatives to your beliefs outside of a false dichotomy. It makes you useless in a discussion because you can’t see what people are saying when it contradicts what you imagine they’d say if they took the position exactly opposite of yours. If you want a reasonable discussion, the first step is to stop telling people what they’re saying and try understanding what they actually are saying.
……………
* Not “pro-gun” because plenty of people are pro-gun without it turning them into morons who lose their minds at the thought of any sort of restrictions on them.

SO well-put. I sat here nodding while agreeing with you and shaking my head in frustration and disbelief and anger at what people wrote in response. I’m am so fucking sick of the “shit happens” attitude after children are gunned down. Thank you.

Allow me to clarify WHY your child or mine for that matter is NOT more important than the rights of “the people”. Maintaining that 2nd Amendment right helps hold the line between corrupt overstepping government and the sovereignty of its citizens. This ensures future generations (not just your child’s but your grand/great grand children) have a free United States to grow up in. Once you disarm the people of this country, you open the door for the government to do as they please. People like yourself without the ability to think beyond themselves and what’s important to them are what’s plaguing this nation. There’s no sense of duty to your nation, and if there is, it’s sorely misguided.

See, you here are a perfect example of why guns are bad for this country. Not the machines themselves, but the ideology that guns are the first and most important defense against government tyranny. If you’re convinced the only kind of trouble the government will offer is the sort you can combat with a gun, then you’ll only watch out for obvious examples of brute force against your own person. All the tyrants have to do is promise you they’ll help you keep your guns and you’ll welcome them into positions of power where they can handily strip you of all other rights and freedom without using an ounce of brute force. Which they’re doing right now with your help, you gullible moron.

If you really care about “the people” and “duty” then get your head out of your ass, look at where the danger really lies (increasing wealth disparity and the outsized influence of private interests in politics), and realize how it’s not something you can fight by shooting at someone.

Yes, and without children you’d not be alive any more than anyone else here. My word, what do they teach in school these days ? I grant that schools have generally always been a failure (partly because human stupidity is infinite), but to think people can’t even figure this out…. It’s so stupid it’s hilarious. Yes, that’s implying something.

On this one: “Jenny…I have no “terror and fear.” I choose to arm myself to protect my family. I’m armed….nothing can scare me ”

I’m sure that means a great deal to someone who launches a rocket at your house, yes? I’m also sure it means a great deal to you like it did to everyone in the infamous (at least if your map includes other countries than the US and if you comprehend the word ‘history’) Manchester bombing as shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_IuHA5DKGY&feature=youtu.be

Yes? I thought not. Your firearms means very little to many things but your thoughts do demonstrate a remarkable amount of arrogance (and self-assuredness perhaps) that you think you of all can protect yourself from people because you have a gun (or hell, an arsenal). Reality is it isn’t that simple. What if a meteor falls on your house? Sure, you won’t be afraid of it but your precious weapons won’t protect you! Reality is many who think they can protect themselves because they have a weapon are sorely mistaken – and often their death (and additionally the death of innocents) proves it.

On this one: “My child is more important that your paranoid need to control others.”

And clearly the dictionary is much less important to you, too. Paranoia is absolutely the wrong word. Neither is this (that is, ‘your gun is less important than my child’ type of remark) about control; ironically though, control goes both ways: you insist on one thing and supposedly others insisting on other things. The fact neither side understand just how extreme they can go is besides the point.

On this one: “It’s not a threat, it’s a promise.”

The typical boring response to ‘is that a threat ?’ and similar. It’s unimaginative. But what it is also is equally incriminating. Careful what you say… it could bite you later on. And similar remarks have bitten people in the past – hard.

On this one: “Until then, enjoy all the Muslim cock your own government is trying to shove in your mouth.”

Funny, isn’t it, how a large portion of society decries negative remarks (even remarks that really aren’t at all negative but only those who are looking for the negative) about a specific religion (you know, Jewry) but the exact opposite is the case for Islam. Hypocrisy and arrogance to the extreme. You might argue that I’m demonstrating the want to find negative but the problem is your connotations are actually making it as if Muslims are a problem. They aren’t. Bigots are.

Right….. You think disarming people will do the trick? Look at Chicago with its strict gun laws . I mean seriously why don’t you just move there or better yet move to UK which has very strict gun laws?

Again with the fear argument. Our fear of your guns is not irrational. Don’t try to trivialize it. However, your fear of someone attacking you or breaking into your home is not trivial, but just less likely. As I stated before. Numbers and data don’t lie. Less guns, less killing. Period.

You certainly did get a lot to bite – haha.
The correct response would have been that your child SHOULD be more important than my gun. How could it not be? My child is more important than My gun.
But yeah, you’re a sneaky one for sure. Baited them with with such a fact based comment. Nicely done. It really shows just how emotional the whole pro-gun/anti-gun struggle is. Some are so quick to defend their right to own,keep and bear, they immediately fly off the handle as soon as they even THINK someone is threatening their position on this subject.
One could have easily baited, and caught, just as many by stating the opposite statement “My gun is more important than your child.” Oh I can hear the hate mail rolling in already. Of course they would say how could anyone think an inanimate object is more important than a life (which I agree with by the way – nothing is more important than life – ALL life), but in the context of the pro/anti debate, “someone else’s child” is not more important than the right to protect “one’s own child”. But still, as I said, just as many anti’s would have gone for the bait. I’m just glad that I live in a country where everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Many men and women have fought and died for that right. And by the way, they used guns to win and keep that right for all of us. Just sayin.
;^)

This is why America scares me. Everyone and anyone can get a gun and when, after a year with more mass shootings than days, the president says that maybe they should be a bit more vigilant about who they give guns to, seemingly half the population goes mad and threatens to shoot the other half.

One would like to think that handful of idiots and whackjobs that you quoted represents a tiny portion of our great country. Regardless, they are out there, the paranoid, the misled, the infantile, and the cowardly. That handful of people -would- put their gun ownership above and beyond your child’s right to live. That’s the sad truth, the sad fact that some Americans are simply devoid of basic common sense for whatever reason. Rest assured your child -is- more important than their gun – no matter how tightly they cling to it.

Hi Jenny, I just want to say that as a person who had grown up as an army-brat, I definitely feel for you. I’ve moved around way too many countries (and have read up way too many stories of warfare, invasions, and cases of civil unrest) which has led me to be unable to even agree with the pro-gun group (and those twitter responses made me die inside. The fact that those smug twunts are so sure that their guns would make them the guardians of their country and the ~Amurrican Way~ is sickening).

Those people need to ask the survivors of the Rwandan massacre whether guns had helped. Those people need to ask the Bosnians and the Albanians if guns would’ve helped against the rocket-launchers and genocidal tactics used by armed Serbian militias. And I really, really wish they’d get a stern talking-to by my Spanish grandmother who knew what tyranny looked like, and how even the availability of guns and grenades didn’t help the Republicans, the communists, and the minor rebels against the fascists.

(or hell, I wish they’d sit down with the same Falklands vets who told us kids about the realities of war–and how knowing how to use a gun doesn’t protect you from panicking or blundering around during a skirmish).
To all those pro-gunners who are arguing in this comment section (and literally ignoring what those Twitter @-holes were doing), I seriously feel sorry for you guys. I hope you guys think enough to stop looking after your own interests instead of looking at what’s actually going on in today’s society.

Conflicts on television were always solved by shooting your way out of sticky situations.

Now playing with dolls and stuffed animals past infancy, that’s not right. You are not allowed to exhibit dangerous signs of loving, nurturing behavior in your playtime, you have a penis! You have to conform to specific gender stereotypes to be “normal”.

Later when you get bullied for not being able to hide your real self in a false shroud of “normal”, and it’s still the time frame where you are taught to stand up to bullies, you know just what to do. You get a gun!

You routinely pack a gun for years (8th grade up to early 30’s), like another daily accessory, because in that self-made delusion you are safe. You still solve troubles with your words, but just having the power to kill anyone at your own discretion gives you a blast of confidence.

It takes a lot of enlightenment to get past all that fear, especially when so many of us in America are raised drowning in it. Believing in slippery-slopes and boogie-men around every corner.

OASN, dont you feel some sort of obligation to correct falsehoods made in comments by your followers ? Like the ridiculous and totally disproven claim of a “mass shooting each day” that one your followers wrote.

CNN, The NYT and Mother Jones all debunked that as nonsense, and the creator of shootingtracker openly admitted to a propaganda effort. Regardless of our polar opposite views on firearms, dont you feel you have a duty to correct such ignorant claims ?

No. My comments section is not a news site nor an encyclopedia. If someone is coming to the comments section of an op ed piece to get all their information on an important issue, they’ve got bigger problems than I can solve. If you’re interesting in disputing someone’s claims, feel free to engage them personally.

To the person who said “The constitution doesn’t guarantee your children” – in the 1920s, the Supreme Court held that parents have a “liberty interest” (“fundamental right” or, from here on, just “right”) under the Due Process clause(s) to raise their children how they want. That’s Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Soc. of Sisters. In Skinner (1942), the Court struck down a law permitting forced sterilizations for certain criminal offenses. Griswold (1965) struck down a Connecticut statute that barred the use of contraceptives, even to married couples. In Eisenstadt (1972), the Court extended the right to access to contraception to individuals. And then there’s Roe v. Wade. The takeaway from these last four cases – we have the right to control our own reproductive systems. In Stanley v. Illinois (1973) and a subsequent series of a cases, the Court held that we have the right to maintain a relationship with our children and to define our families. So in review – we have the right to have children. To not have children. To keep the children we do have, and to raise them how we want (within reason, obvi.) So, I’m not sure in what way the Constitution doesn’t guarantee our children. Because, yes, the state can take away your children for abuse and neglect. And yes, anyone can take your child away with a gun. But your guns can be taken away for the same reasons, so…

And for what it’s worth, the Supreme Court didn’t hold that we have an individual right to gun ownership until 2008 in Heller v. D.C. And if you’re saying to yourself – “Well, at least the Constitution says something about bearing arms. There’s no textual basis for any of that child stuff” – then go read Heller v. D.C. You’ll notice that Scalia’s central argument is this: “Of course the framers didn’t say anything about individuals having the right to bear arms. They didn’t have to say that. Everyone already knew they had that right. It’s implied by the 2nd Amendment.” So I don’t see the difference.

the author equates gun owners to terrorists, based upon some of these comments. Stating “The pro-gun right is as much a terrorist organization as Al-Qaeda or Daesh. They hold us hostage by subtly endorsing the assassinations of elected leaders. They buy politicians outright.” I could point to several occasions where liberal groups have escalated to the point of threatening death to people who don’t believe as they do, such as the case where a couple of bakers wouldn’t bake a cake for a gay couple, or those liberals that wish death upon politicians and police officers who don’t support their cause. While Soros, Bloomberg and other Billionaires and even Hollywood elites spend money and time to push agendas and “buy politicians outright”. I guess it only counts if you disagree with the agenda.

So the “liberal” groups “escalate”… but you big boys are READY TO GO right from the start– i.e., you’ve got your precious guns, and you’re ready– RIGHT NOW, DAMMIT– to start blasting away. Minor difference there.

Actual question: Those in the grotesquely paranoid-delusional camp who are ready– RIGHT NOW, DAMMIT– to “defend” their home and chattel– erm, wives and children– with guns, and who “responsibly” consign their beloved guns to safes when said guns are not in use: How long, exactly, does it take you to fetch your beloved gun from its safe resting-place and load it? For example, let’s just say that I and a couple of my “liberal” friends come to your stronghold and proceed to kick in your door? How long will it take you to de-safe and load your gun? Or do you keep it with you AT ALL TIMES DAMMIT!!!– when, say, you’re eating dinner, or playing video games, or romping with your beloved chattel– erm, children– or brushing your teeth, or taking your monthly shower…? I’ve been reading court cases as part of my job for nearly twenty-five years, and from what I’ve seen the average “kick-in” takes less than fifteen seconds. You’re going to have MR. BOOM-BOOM out of his I-love-muh-famb’ly-so’s-I-keeps-’em-safe firearms receptacle and ready to go in that amount of time? Seriously…? Here’s a reply for you whackjobs: NO, YOU’RE NOT. And if you’re leaving loaded guns lying around– and I’m willing to bet a chunk of my tiny salary that you are– you’re worse than the people who really aren’t all that likely to be out to get you. I feel sorry for your families and the danger in which you keep them. I really do.

I will not debate the issue that you child is the most important thing in your life. And rightly so, it should be. But you are making a statement that is without context. You could have just as easily used the word *Car, Paper, Wood, Club, Rock, Hammer, Pipe, Screw Driver * or a multitude of other items that are just tools. A tool left by itself does nothing, it takes no action by itself good or bad. Any tool can be misused. Any of the tools mentioned can cause great harm or death. It is the human using the tool that determines the action or outcome of it’s use. You can use a can of corn to beat someones head in, even though it is in that case an instrument of death, it is still a can of corn. It has been misused. In countries where guns have been outright banned, you are correct that the gun crime has gone down to almost zero. But the crime and death rate itself did not go down. The crime rates actually went up in these countries. Only now they use knives, clubs and pipes, bombs etc. nothing has changed….only the tools used by those mentally unstable criminals. My gun, and the gun of many others is why we as Americans have the life we do. Guns have been part of America since the very beginning. Guns have been used to protect us from our enemies foreign and domestic and to insure our continued freedoms. Guns are not the problem in America…the lack of mental health programs is the real issue. Most of the crimes committed by these people could have been avoided. There were in most cases plenty of early warning. Gun crimes committed in the United States is almost always done with guns illegally obtained..law abiding gun owners have to go jump through many hoops to obtained a license to own a gun. More laws will do nothing to stop criminals. It is illegal to kill period…but has that stopped them? No..It is the system that is deficient…stop coddling the criminals, enforce the laws we already have. Early releases don’t help the problem… Wake up America..Wake Up!

I don’t want to argue about what you said about items from our everyday life being used as weapons. Because obviously, even a pen can be used to kill somebody–actually, you don’t even need a “thing”, at all. Your fingers might just do the trick when push comes to shove. And I don’t want to argue that things don’t kill, but the people handling those things. A gun lying on the ground will not just rise by itself and pull its trigger, obviously. Neither is it wrong that in a lot of areas (not only gun violence), the law should be enforced more forcefully (…duh…) than it often is. And that’s not only the case in the US, mind you.

But what I would really like to know is where you got your information from that “the crime and death rate itself did not go down. The crime rates actually went up in these countries [countries where guns have been outright banned].” All the statistics I ever saw or worked with, no matter where they came from, clearly show that the United States (though definitely not the most violent or dangerous country in the world, of course) ranks much higher on any crime or homocide rates list than for example any European country (be that the UK, Spain, Greece or any other)–though, of course, European countries haven’t actually banned guns in general, as far as I know. It’s just really, really hard to get a permission to own one. So, maybe you’re talking about other countries here? If so, which ones?

What creeps me out is that the nut seem to WANT to shoot and kill someone, and they think that life works like a first person shooter. They come up with bizarre scenarios like “Obama and the liberals outlaw Christianity and then they come to throw us all in prison camps and confiscate our guns!” The scenario always ends with them being the badass action hero who shoots a lot of people and saves the world! They get excited when they talk about all the “liberals” they’re going to kill.

What’s horrifying is that they genuinely believe these things are going to happen; after all, right-wing media is constantly feeding people ridiculous conspiracy theories about “godless liberals.” Even if this scenario became true, one idiot (or a few) with a gun isn’t going to “save the world” like in the movies and FPS games. Guns didn’t save people from Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or communist North Korea.

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